H. G. Wells Quotes

A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head.

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.

He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him.

It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts.

If you push in every time there's a big moment, then the tenth time you push in, you're not going to get the same effect. Or if you have too many close ups, then when you have a big moment and you want a close-up in order to make a point, it doesn't mean anything because you've already been doing close-ups. It's like writing in all capitals. Then after a while that doesn't mean anything. So, just because you can do something with a camera doesn't mean you should.

Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.

When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out.

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.

When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out.

Write plays that matter. Raise the stakes. Shout, yell, holler, but make yourself heard. It's time for playwrights to reclaim the theatre. We do that by speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to us. If a play isn't worth dying for, maybe it isn't worth writing.

I always feel super uncomfortable when it's like ah, there probably has to be a sex scene. I feel really bad and then always look around to see if anyone is watching me while I'm writing. I want to apologize to people who have to read those sex scenes, but I feel like it's part of the characters life, it's important.

It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.

The other day, when my 4-year-old saw a flowering tree and said, "Daddy, it's raining petals," that was poetry that just melted my heart into a mushy, yummy Fudgsicle.

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.

If someone strikes my heart, it does not break, but it bursts, and the flame coming out of it becomes a torch on my path.

Criticism will plant FEAR in the human heart, or resentment, but it will not build love or affection.

His loyalty, so fierce and unwavering, makes my eyes water and heart ache.

Paint, not the thing but the effect which it produces.

Let a man once see himself as others see him, and all enthusiasm vanishes from his heart.

It was probably 10 at night when I started to read Donnie Darko. I get in bed and read the first page, and I go, "Hmmm. That's interesting." Second page, "Wow." By the fourth page, my heart started to beat, and I knew. It makes me cry, because I knew I had found a classic film. You just know when you get certain material.

Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.