Quotes from Sol Stein

A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.

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

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories

Say it new or say it straight.

The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems.

I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.

It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing

A writer writes what other people only think.

Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

You can never know enough about your characters.

What I have never witnessed is a writer's work succeeding notably in a field he doesn't habitually read for pleasure.

Today's readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility.

The function of suspense is to put the reader in danger of an overfull bladder.

Tension produces instantaneous anxiety, and the reader finds it delicious.

We are all writers from an early age. Most of what we write is nonfiction—essays for school, letters to friends, memoranda to colleagues—in which we are trying to pass on information. We are raised with a traditional nonfiction mind-set. Even when we write love letters, we are trying to communicate how we feel and not necessarily trying to evoke an emotion in the recipient, though that might be better suited to our purpose.

Parents begin by loving their children; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

be sure you don't stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator.

Diction involves the choice of words for their precise meaning and sound, the arrangement of those words, and their selection for effect.

Writers of nonfiction have the right—perhaps even the responsibility—to access the wonders of the writer's craft to make their work interesting and enjoyable.

A writer who always has his characters "walk" is missing opportunities.

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.

Those are the three keys: the want and the opposition to the want need to be important, necessary, and urgent. The result should be the kind of conflict that interests readers.

When we get involved with other people, the chances of a clash are present even with people we love because we do not have the same scripts in our heads.