literary motifs Quotes

The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.

Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them... you could use them, you could change them.

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.

Each poet probably has his or her own cupboard of magnets. For some, it is cars; for others, works of art, or certain patterns of form or sound; for others, certain stories or places, Philip Levine's Detroit, Gwendolyn Brooks's Chicago, Seamus Heaney's time-tunneled, familied Ireland.

They say great themes make great novels

Every novel starts with a theme, and I am constantly looking for big ideas.