Sensory Detail Quotes

I think of great masters, like [Alfred] Hitchcock, for example, who works absolutely within this sensational realm. You feel like you can always tell what temperature a room is in a Hitchcock film because the people feel alive, they don't feel like they're just being filmed on a stage.

And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.

I think I'm the only player who looks at each and every center and says to myself, 'That's barbecued chicken down there.'

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance.

The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.

But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.

My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail.

A wine goes in my mouth, and I just see it. I see it in three dimensions. The textures. The flavours. The smells. They jump out at me. When I put my nose in a glass, it's like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where everything around me is gone, and every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine.

It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.

Words, particularly in a play, should have the texture of a crisp, autumn apple.

I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

Without memories to cloud it, the mind perceives with absolute clarity. Each observation stands out in stark relief. In the beginning, when there's not yet a smudge, the slate still blank, there is only the present moment: each vital detail, shocked color, the fall of light. Like film stills. The mind relentlessly open to the world, deeply impressed, even hurt by it: not yet gauzed by memory.