“If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.”
Introduction: The Custom-House
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne 128
American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879) 1804–1864Related quotes
Variant: I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, «There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.
On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons
Context: I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.
On the relentlessly brutal tone of the works of screenwriter Cormac McCarthy
New York Times interview (2013)
“What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat)
I write romance novels. (Acheron)”
Source: Devil May Cry
“Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.”
Preface
The Marble Faun (1860)
Context: No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.
“When a man writes a romance, the woman dies. When a woman writes one, it ends all tidy and sweet.”
Source: What Happens in London