Top 100 Outline Quotes
#1. Thinking through quotes, which to say scouring a range of texts for insight, is one way to outline the process of thinking/feeling through a subject.
Masha Tupitsyn
#2. When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper.
Pat Barker
#3. One guy wanted an outline of my foot. Another guy wanted locks of my hair.
Nicole Eggert
#4. His fingers brushed the outline of the bronze disc hanging beneath his tunic. Haydn jerked his
hand away, gritting his teeth as he tried to block the memories. The clashing of steel. The screams and cries of battle. They fled, replaced by flames. Shadows. Pleading and tears.
Hope Ann
#5. There's obviously some strange correspondence between the general outline of a life and that stream of petty events in which a person is constantly involved and regards as insignificant.
Victor Pelevin
#6. Storytelling requires two minds. The writer draws the basic outlines and adds some detail. It's never complete, however, until the reader fills in that outline with the colors and experiences of his or her own life.
Rysa Walker
#7. The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky.
Henry Adams
#8. After we made love he took a piece of chalk and made an outline of my body.
Joan Rivers
#9. At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.
Elmore Leonard
#10. To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.
Thomas Jefferson
#11. Everything is clear to me - outline, details, future, emotion. Not like the world, where everything is muddy and messed, and nothing ever works out the way you mean it to - no matter how skilful or how honourable you are, no matter how vile your enemy. When
Kelly Gardiner
#12. The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
Jacob Bronowski
#13. The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
George Eliot
#14. Writing is difficult. It's a time commitment, it's labor and I'd have to get myself to sit down and actually do the work and outline.
Busy Philipps
#15. Under the blanket the outline of her body was slender and displayed a certain innocence, a precious quality far more significant than the elegance of her form. She seemed to radiate kindness and essential goodness, and Darby, trying to measure the value of her, told himself it was immeasurable.
David Goodis
#16. There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse to taking it in a new direction, as long as I can get it back to where I need it to go.
Justin Cronin
#17. It was time to take up the discussion over governance, housing, transportation, security, health care, and education - to define the country we wanted and outline our terms. Who were we. . . . What were our limits and our ambitions?
Juliana Barbassa
#18. THE ARRIVAL Like a tide it comes in, wave after wave of foliage and fruit, the nurtured and the wild, out of the light to this shore. In its extravagance we shape the strenuous outline of enough.
Wendell Berry
#19. I wanted things to be highly coloured, simple in outline, without ambiguity, which is what most children want when it comes to the stories of their parents. They want a postcard.
Margaret Atwood
#20. In my stand-up, I generally improvise from an outline.
Jeff Garlin
#21. Maybe everyone in the world was this inconsistent, this fragments. All we could see of each other
all we could see of ourselves
was a ragged person-shaped outline, a game of connect-the-dots without enough dots.
Daryl Gregory
#22. I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.
James Patterson
#23. Is this one of those contracts like in that kinky book where we outline what we're willing to do or not do during sex? Like our hard limits and safe words?
Katie Ashley
#24. Funny how an absence can feel like a presence, like that space practically glows with her outline and make me notice how she's not here.
Joan Steinau Lester
#25. Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate.
Vince Lombardi
#26. I like to make an outline or cards and then utterly ignore them.
Margaret Stohl
#27. Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds.
Aimee Carter
#28. A leader is the one who can outline the broad vision and the direction, and say here's where we are going to go, here's why we need to go there, and here's how we are going to get there. A manager is the one who actually gets up under the hood and tunes the carburetor.
Mike Huckabee
#29. Today, to him gazing south with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; today, the unseen was everything. the unknown the only real fact of life.
Kenneth Grahame
#30. All too often too often we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.
Julia Cameron
#31. I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.
Barry Schwartz
#32. Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms - if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
E. O. Wilson
#33. Ignorance of God's prophetic outline, failure to know God's program for the Church, the nations, and Israel, is the cause of the overwhelming amount of error and misunderstanding of the events of the future.
M. R. DeHaan
#34. There is a chalk outline slowly being drawn around common sense and most people can't identify the victim.
Dennis Miller
#35. Outline of your frame
My paper witness your silhouette
Sipping in coffee
My muse, my Juliet.
Afternoon spent,
In hungry desires
Ending with a kiss
On your coffee lips.
Saiber
#36. I think every writer struggles in some way with writers block. The trick is to plan out what you are going to say beforehand. I found out that if you make an outline you're much less likely to get blocked when you get into the middle of the story.
Rick Riordan
#37. If ever I were to have a symbol attributed to me, it would be a heart, the outline!
Rudolph Valentino
#38. By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.
Georg Simmel
#39. I don't write shows with dialogue where actors have to memorize dialogue. I write the scenes where we know everything that's going to happen. There's an outline of about seven or eight pages, and then we improvise it.
Larry David
#40. I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.
Donna Leon
#41. Step 7: Oak Wood Outline Build a row of oak wood on the 1st and the 4th block below the ceiling between the pillars. Follow the blue lines in the picture and do this on all four sides. Check out the 2nd picture to see how the tree house should look by now.
Johan Loof
#42. What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
#43. I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.
Shirley Jackson
#44. Bones," I sighed. "Know something? I'm not afraid of you, but you scare
me ... ." His outline blurred again.
"You scare me, too, Kitten," he might have replied, but I couldn't be sure.
Jeaniene Frost
#45. My technique, starting with a quick outline in pencil, is designed to record first impressions, with no time for second thoughts.
John Newbery
#46. The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.
John Scalzi
#47. In Indian music, it is not possible to build anything other than the raga basis. We can run away from its fetters, but not from its main outline.
Rabindranath Tagore
#48. I am a big proponent of writing a great outline. That way you can avoid hitting a roadblock. There is no worse feeling than writing yourself into a corner but if you've figured it all out in the outline then you won't have that problem.
Michael Showalter
#49. For the lifter pursuing fitness and health and perhaps fat loss, here is the general outline of your programming: lift as heavy as possible, as frequently as possible, as fresh as possible, as linked as possible.
Sean Schniederjan
#50. I routinely oscillate between exultation and despair. Maybe at the end of the day I feel pretty good about what I've written, but the next morning I see that it's crap. Then I start again - make a new outline, do some more research, try to rethink the whole question.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#51. SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.
Jerry B. Jenkins
#52. law of iterated expectations, which I outline here in its strong form: if I expect to expect something at some date in the future, then I already expect that something at present.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#53. I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens - you know, until it finds its own plot - because you can't outline and then fit the thing into it. I suppose it's a slow way of working.
Nelson Algren
#54. She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn.
John Green
#55. I always work from an outline, so I know all the of the broad events and some of the finer details before I begin writing the book.
Mercedes Lackey
#56. Clearly outline your plans, acknowledge God and he will direct them for you. If you can have it planned, you can achieve it; if you have it planned big, you will achieve it big. Make your choice!
Israelmore Ayivor
#57. That was, in writing the 'Twilight' script I had about five weeks to write that. I'd taken about a month to write the outline and then it was slam into a script and write it down fast because the writer's strike was looming.
Melissa Rosenberg
#59. I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar.
Stephen King
#60. For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is.
Jodi Picoult
#61. In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.
Peter Matthiessen
#62. I come up with an idea and I'll start throwing little suggestions for possible scenes into a folder, but before I seriously sit down to write Word One, they whole outline is finished. Sue me. It works.
Dan Alatorre
#63. It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
Colley Cibber
#64. I don't make outlines or plans because whenever I do, they turn out to be useless. It is as if I am compelled to violate the scope of any outline or plan; it is as if the writing does not want me to know what is about to happen.
Leslie Marmon Silko
#65. I don't think I'm anything like the improviser. I'm not. I do better with at least an outline.
Kathleen Turner
#66. I used to be an obsessive outliner - figuring that writing without an outline was like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down.
Robin Wasserman
#67. The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#68. In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.
Aristotle.
#69. year-old girl. It was more than a habit, for a habit could be broken. This was a deep disposition, the outline experience had stencilled on character. It was not
Ian McEwan
#70. Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use.
Jean Aitchison
#71. There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form.
Carson McCullers
#72. The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.
Jeffery Deaver
#73. They shed a rather unpleasant glow that didn't so much illuminate, as outline the darkness.
Terry Pratchett
#74. The important discovery I made very early is that my novels had to be written without any given plan or outline. I can't do it in any other way. But then they are dependent on the sentences, my intuition, and, as I have experienced many times, the subconscious.
Per Petterson
#75. I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.)
John Green
#76. For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.
George Stephen
#77. By about chapter six of 'Wolf Brother,' I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn't tell Torak's story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books.
Michelle Paver
#78. Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.
David Rabe
#79. In the classic outline of a failed coup, the plotters had sought to oust the president without first securing the support of the military and the civil service, and without seizing the headquarters of the state broadcaster.
Tim Shipman
#80. For me, when I 'discover' a story, there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity, perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway, when darkness lifts and reveals the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.
David Bergen
#81. We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy.
Nassau William Senior
#82. I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.
Ken Follett
#83. Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy.
Bob Shacochis
#84. I never work from an outline, and often I don't know how the story will end.
Patricia MacLachlan
#85. I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.
Julie Kagawa
#86. I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names.
Dana Spiotta
#87. If you do come across 'Sanctus' in a bookshop, please see past the cross on the cover and the sinister outline of a monk and just read the first page and make your own mind up. If it's still not for you, then that's fine; just put it back and walk away.
Simon Toyne
#88. Killing people was easier when the only face I ever saw was Mother's back then, anyone else was the enemy and shooting at an outline in a scope wasn't any different than taking down a deer, just in a different shape.
Mindy McGinnis
#89. I don't work with an outline, except a vague one in my head, a general idea of character, place, arc ... I'm like a composer with a symphony in their head: I can hear the music, I just have to figure out how to put it down on paper. But I don't always know where my stories are going when I begin.
Said Sayrafiezadeh
#90. The most challenging and exciting aspect is the outline and formation of the plot points. This is the stage where the notion of the story begins to take shape, and I can see glimpses of what is to come.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#91. She was like an outline of the painting of the Holy Virgin that an artist has sketched in black and white, but not yet filled with colour.
Karen Maitland
#92. You know, that's the very least that the American voters can expect is that when you're running for President that you outline what you would do and what you would do differently from this - from the President of the United States.
Mitt Romney
#93. I don't write with an outline. I don't often know what I'm going to do as I'm writing. And I do everything by feel and by instinct.
James Frey
#94. An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above.
Maria Mitchell
#95. He pushed a finger through the surface of the water to trace the outline of her mouth. Ethereal bits of flesh floated loosely about his knuckle and nail. Then, calmly, he pulled her body up out of the tub and into his arms. He placed his lips on hers, now as cold and dead as his own.
P.J. Parker
#96. Move out man! Life is fleeting by. Do something worthwhile, berfore you die. Leave Behind a work sublime, that will outline you and time.
Alfred Armand Montapert
#97. After one year all that will remain of the car is a vague outline. Trees, stop signs, people, and books grow old, crumble and disappear inside our habits.
Michael W. Clune
#98. If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.
R.L. Stine
#99. I usually know where I want to end up when I begin, but I have no idea how I'm going to get there ... I don't write with an outline, and surprises happen on the way, and sometimes it changes.
Kevin Henkes
#100. If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it's just about getting the outline of the forest.
Jeff Koons
