George Higgins Quotes

#1. Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist.

George V. Higgins

#2. MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It's not right. She should think of the future.
HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you havnt any future to think of.

George Bernard Shaw

#3. The received image of a writer is that of an unproductive sensitive who suffers from the vapors, is enslaved by his gonads, falls victim to romantic swoons and passes out at deadlines.

George V. Higgins

#4. The characters are telling you the story. I'm not telling you the story, they're going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story.

George V. Higgins

#5. What a woman is taught, she shares with her family.

Amanda Lindhout

#6. In March 1853 she was afflicted with a pain in the chest; her tongue seemed to be covered with a film; leeches failed to make her breathing any easier.

Gustave Flaubert

#7. Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

Victor Hugo

#8. If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.

George V. Higgins

#9. Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

George V. Higgins

#10. Professor Henry Higgins: She's an owl, sickened by a few days of *my* sunshine.

George Bernard Shaw

#11. Rental formal wear of the sky-blue, brocade and shiny varieties is favored by upwardly mobile young gangsters drafted as groomsmen for weddings.

George V. Higgins

#12. Professor Henry Higgins: Oh, Pickering, for God's sake stop being dashed and do something!

George Bernard Shaw

#13. When I met [Robert Pattinson], he literally didn't make any impression on me. He's quiet, and he's not very outgoing.

Ashley Greene

#14. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion

George Bernard Shaw

#15. What You Lose on the Swings You Make Up on the Merry-Go-Round,

George V. Higgins

#16. Egotism: The art of seeing in yourself what others cannot see.

George V. Higgins

#17. It was darker than a carload of assholes.

George V. Higgins

#18. A cop told me, a long time ago, that there's no substitute for knowing what you're doing. Most of us scribblers do not. The ones that're any good are aware of this. The rest write silly stuff. The trouble is this: The readers know it.

George V. Higgins

#19. Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers to astound the multitude.

George V. Higgins

#20. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

George Bernard Shaw

#21. The seductiveness of baseball is that almost everyone with an abiding interest in it knows exactly how it should be played. And secretly believes that he could do it, if only God had seen fit to make him just a little bit less clumsy.

George V. Higgins

#22. This life's hard, but it's harder if you're stupid.

George V. Higgins

#23. HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

George Bernard Shaw

#24. first changing your attitude toward all these things you now think are not what they ought to be.

Joseph Benner

#25. HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?
MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper - say on a canal barge ...

George Bernard Shaw

#26. How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

George Bernard Shaw

#27. Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)

George V. Higgins

#28. Show the reader what the character thinks about, and then the reader will think about it too.

George V. Higgins

#29. To work with children anywhere is just plain fun.

Dale Murphy

#30. PICKERING:Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?
HIGGINS [moodily]:Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?

George Bernard Shaw

#31. You cannot write well without data.

George V. Higgins

#32. A bit change for a big impact.

Toba Beta

#33. The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we re-enact the agony and the temptation in the Garden. Baseball child's play? Hell, up here in Boston it's a passion play.

George V. Higgins

#34. Life is hard but being stupid makes it harder.

George V. Higgins