Beth Macy Quotes

We're moved by emotions and characters and stories. We love that.

I can be so blown away by story lines.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I want to earn a reader's capacity to be moved.

My writing could be the most beautiful or important piece of prose, but it means nothing if it's boring, if people aren't listening or reading. I think transporting someone, putting them in a story for a few hours, taking them out of their worlds, is what I always strive to do.

It's the writer's job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel.

I read little nonfiction, but I have no boundaries about the fiction I relish. The only unfailing criterion is that I can hitch my heart to the imagined world and read on.

When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.

I think good entertainment makes you feel something... it can be a variety of different feelings.

I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can't do, and that is, bring your audience along.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

I'm just interested in things that move me and make me think, make me laugh.

I love comedy, but it's dramas that stick with me.

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.

When you feel moved by the story, you want to tell that story.

People want good stories.

I become involved with things that speak to me and move me and make me laugh and frighten me.

I know what it's like to be genuinely intrigued and compelled by a story and to have a sense that there's an adventure to be had and a film to be conjured.

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

The connective tissue between storytelling, advice, and comedy is passion.

If a fantasy, if a story can help you feel something, I think that's really cool.

Things happen to all of us. The writer's job is to get you interested.

People just love stories.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.