Toni Morrison Quotes

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Foreknowledge is power.

I like to plan. I like to see the future.

I don't do anything unless I think about it six months in advance.

Pep Guardiola sees things before they happen, and that's an advantage - a massive plus.

Hindsight is good, foresight is better; but second sight is best of all.

What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?” “I don’t know—avant verrais?

I always know more about the ending, even the aftermath to the ending, than I know about the beginning. And so there's a construction that works from back to front.

You've got a fairly good idea as to what the questions are going to be. But how to record the best answer is another matter.

If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation

I am courageous at the decisive moment. But I need a good deal of start-up time, and I try to take as much as possible into consideration beforehand.

The past is all we know of the future.

It would have marked a want of foresight in the convention, which our own experience would have rendered inexcusable.

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story.

I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

Every battle is won before it is fought.

For us, there's an inherent process when you're ending something to be thinking about the beginning, as writers.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

The one who anticipates the action wins. The one who does not, loses.

What men have seen they know; But what shall come hereafter No man before the event can see, Nor what end waits for him.

Remember this: Anticipation is the ultimate power. Losers react; leaders anticipate.

Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.

I'm not method or anything like that, but sometimes you get the scenes and you're like 'Really, Damon [Lindelof]? More of this? Can I have one scene where it's a walk in the park?' But he doesn't do that. He puts every character through their paces.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.