Ideas Quotes - Page 448

I have an idea of how the book will finish up, but it very rarely finishes up the way that I think it's going to.

It's the pool where we all go down to drink, to swim, to catch a little fish from the edge of the shore; it's also the pool where some hardy souls go out in their flimsy wooden boats after the big ones. It is the pool of life, the cup of imagination, and she has an idea that different people see different versions of it, but with two things ever in common: it's always about a mile deep in the Fairy Forest, and it's always sad. Because imagination isn't the only thing this place is about.

Rationalism is the idea that we can ever understand anything about the state of being. It's a deathtrip. It always has been. . . . And if rationalism is a deathtrip, then irrationalism might very well be a lifetrip . . . at least until it proves otherwise.

A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

...stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position.

By tomorrow at this time, I think you're going to have a much better idea of what crazy is. -- Ev Hillman

An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it.

I'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

A writer's notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around.

Working on a new idea is kind of like getting married. Then a new idea comes along and you think, 'Man, I'd really like to go out with her.' But you can't. At least not until the old idea is finished.

It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America exists in is a culture of Kardashian.

Science can't tell us what our life means ethically. It can't tell us what we are meant to do as moral creatures. But, insofar as science can understand what we're made of, and what we're related to, the Darwinian revolution completely revised our ideas about who we are and what we're related to and how long we've been here and why we're on this Earth.

It often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find they don't work, so I have to give it up.

Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.

It was extremely important to show that Wilde's sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.

Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

I'm sure Church got some of his ideas from this trip to Europe.

We have this idea in our mind that there's a separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics. Like it's not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course, there - there isn't.

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.

Summer movie idea: take all the sequels that are out right now, and make movies about their backstories.

No one has any idea what's going to happen. Not even Elon Musk. That's why he's building those rockets. He wants a 'Plan B' on another world.

It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.