C. S. Lewis Quotes

Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.

The most important aspect of any story, to me, is character.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

The funny thing about writing is, although you are writing about an experience which only you have had, you are trying to welcome other people into it, and there are ways I think of doing this, and one of them is through the senses, through the sounds and the smells.

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

Strangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people.

Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.

Technique is of less interest than character and story.

Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.

As a filmmaker, you realize that places have character based on their history as much as a face does or an actor does.

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

I got a story to tell.

I'm Keith," he said, "and you're . . . clearly mad, but what's your name?

You don't have to underestimate your audience anymore. They'd actually like to laugh a little bit. So, the character came to me and once it's got its grips in you, there's nowhere to go.

Hello, my name is ees Lebkuchen Spice, and I vant to show you my coooooookies.

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?

'Is that really the best you can say? An average-looking boy? An awful lot of boys are average-looking, S.Q.!' And poor S.Q., he just kept arguing that 'this boy was especially average-looking.' " ~ Kate Wetherall, The Mysterious Benedict Society

Gary, who's wearing a coral shirt and white pants, growls to look tough. It doesn't work.

I think that Brighton, for a crime writer, is almost like a character.

The name is Schitt," he replied. "Jack Schitt.

The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies.