Top 44 Sol Stein Quotes
#1. In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.
Sol Stein
#2. A writer writes what other people only think.
Sol Stein
#3. The single characteristic that most makes a difference in the success of an article or nonfiction book is the author's courage in revealing normally unspoken things about himself or his society. It takes guts to be a writer
Sol Stein
#4. Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on.
Sol Stein
#6. Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.
Sol Stein
#7. Arousal is nature's stimulus for the propagation of the human race. The unaroused male of the species is as useless for that purpose as a worm. Arousal can happen sooner or later, but it must happen.
Sol Stein
#8. More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity
C.S. Lewis
#9. Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.
Sol Stein
#10. The function of suspense is to put the reader in danger of an overfull bladder.
Sol Stein
#11. Try thou not. But do thou or do thou not, For there is no
Ian Doescher
#12. The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.
Sol Stein
#13. This should be a librarian's job, of course, but you can't trust people who read that much.
Anthony Marra
#14. Today's readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility.
Sol Stein
#15. Sol? As much as I appreciate you making me this lovely womanly blanket ... you think we could try lying like normal people who don't want to merge into one being?"
"Can't have that. We'd make one gross merged being. Your ass and my ass together? The universe would run in terror.
Charlotte Stein
#16. Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.
Sol Stein
#17. When we met, we were two injured souls. But keeping the real out of our lives for fear of what we might find. But nothing could have kept us apart. I never believed in destiny. Thought that was a bunch of crap for people who read too many books. Until you.
Vi Keeland
#18. Be sure you don't stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator.
Sol Stein
#19. Tension produces instantaneous anxiety, and the reader finds it delicious.
Sol Stein
#20. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing
Sol Stein
#22. From now on, match me with one guy at a time.
Harry Greb
#23. A lawyer's job is to manipulate the skeletons in other people's closets.
Sol Stein
#24. A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.
Nikki Giovanni
#25. A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.
Sol Stein
#26. The best use of family was having it in front of other people.
Julia Pierpont
#27. A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview.
Donald E. Westlake
#28. The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting ... Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.
Sol Stein
#29. A writer who always has his characters "walk" is missing opportunities.
Sol Stein
#30. His hands slid around my head, pulling me back to his mouth. There was a cracking sound in the house. A fissure of electricity shot through the room. Something smoked. I didn't care.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#31. Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.
Bernard Beckett
#32. We exist to serve our community. That's the most important mind-set to maintain.
Chris Brogan
#33. To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.
Sol Stein
#34. Readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience ... is increasingly visual.
Sol Stein
#35. Marie Antoinette was funny, I'm sure she was just misinterpreted. You know the 'Let them eat cake' line. She seems like she was kind of funny, like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Griffin type.
Colin Quinn
#36. You can never know enough about your characters.
Sol Stein
#37. When we get involved with other people, the chances of a clash are present even with people we love because we do not have the same scripts in our heads.
Sol Stein
#38. Say it new or say it straight.
Sol Stein
#39. Among civilized peoples, especially the very wealthy population of the United States of America, women have become objects of luxury who consume but do not produce.
Vilfredo Pareto
#40. In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories
Sol Stein
#41. Writers of nonfiction have the right - perhaps even the responsibility - to access the wonders of the writer's craft to make their work interesting and enjoyable.
Sol Stein
#42. Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.
Sol Stein
#43. There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Sol Stein
#44. Parents begin by loving their children; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Sol Stein
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