Isobelle Carmody Quotes

And isn't it better really to leave things only hinted at?

I never say what I mean, but I always manage to say something similar.

I'm an enemy of exposition. I feel there's no need to overstate.

Anytime I feel like I am beginning to explain the plot or characters too much my stomach churns. I like stories that let the characters speak for themselves and don't give you all the information.

In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.

One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

I don't ever feel that it's necessary to say certain things. I think we can be very suggestive. I think we can allude to certain things.

A lot of people tend to chew up the scenery. I'm a firm believer in less is more, especially on the big screen.

The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing.

There is a bearing which comes from having a little bit of something withheld. In acting classes, they always say don't reveal 100 percent: it's much more interesting.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'

Basically, less is more when it comes to film.

'Almost' can be a polite way of saying something definitely. It withholds the obvious and dangles it just long enough.

You don't have to say everything to say something.

As a writer, you paint strokes and leave suggestions so readers can create their own pictures. That allows you to know someone by a small action and it saves countless pages of explanation.

When you want some subtle emotions, you need some subtle vehicles for emotion.

I feel, in drama, you don't need to be fed everything. Even though sometimes when you watch, you want to know what happened and you want to see it, I feel like sometimes it's so much stronger to see the effects that those actions have had.

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.

When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don't state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint.

On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood. And you can try more ephemeral, more fleeting things in a story - you can work more by suggestion - than in a novel. Less is resolved, more is suggested, perhaps.

I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white.