laura’s Submitted Quotes

Problematize - The blame for this awful neologism lies with academia, where the word serves no apparent purpose except to demonstrate one's mastery of obscurantist jargon.

GIve me a copper coin and I will tell you a golden tale.

The only thing I know for sure is that the words I read as coming from Jesus Christ are the most truthful thing I have ever heard.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim,
Seven bloodhounds followed him.

Conrad: "You really are a son of a bitch, aren't you?"
Tyler: "Yes. It does appear that you despicable people are starting to rub off on me."

John: Oh, please, can we not do this this time?
Sherlock: Do what?
John: You being all mysterious with your cheekbones and turning your coat collar up so you look cool.
Sherlock: I don't do that.

My intention has been to set up, in the midst of our community, a billiard-table, at which every one may amuse himself without hurt to body and soul; for innocent recreations do good rather than harm.

Postmodernism, as practised by Coover, is not simply a question of pointing out (tediously) to the reader that she is reading a novel. It's about a return to the novel's original, scandalous ability to create realities, rather than pretending to be a mirror or a movie camera.

The truth is that books are essentially not physical objects, but temporal ones.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

There's nothing we can't do if we work hard, never sleep, and shirk all other responsibilities in our lives.

A transmedia story is one where fragmentation is a key characteristic, with the purpose of inducing the audience into actively seeking out multiple pieces of the story.

Emphasizing the ways that games are tools for instruction—whether intellectual, physical, or moral—is an unfortunate residue of their origins as children’s playthings. Abandoning it will be the sign, maybe the last one, that this new form of storytelling is all grown up.

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

It's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done.

Nothing compares with the fluidity of longhand. You shift things around without shifting them around—in that you merely indicate a possibility while your original thought is still there. The trouble with a computer is that what you come out with has no memory, no provenance, no history—the little cursor, or whatever it’s called, that wobbles around the middle of the screen falsely gives you the impression that you’re thinking. Even when you’re not

When I am stuck with a sentence that isn’t fully born, it isn’t yet there, I sometimes think, How would Dickens go at this sentence, how would Bellow or Nabokov go at this sentence? What you hope to emerge with is how you would go at that sentence, but you get a little shove in the back by thinking about writers you admire.

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead.

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.