“ That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 1.3K
“ That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 1.4K
“ Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums? ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 2K
“ When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you. ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
“ And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London. ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
“ And I wouldn't feel any loss because I wouldn't ever have met her. I wondered suddenly if Terence did, if he knew on some level that he hadn't met his true love. And if he did, what did he feel? Mawkish sorrow, like one of his Victorian poems? Or a gnawing of some need unsatisfied? Or just a grayness to everything? ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 3.6K
“ Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one? ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 305
“ I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books. ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 2K
“ I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books. ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 1.9K
“ ...It was only ninetyfour pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 1.9K
“ ...It was only ninetyfour pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad ”
- Connie Willis- Copy
- 3.4K
- 1