Quotes about plot

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"Eternal Return, and After" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718030428/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/269/eternal-return-and-after (2011)

"A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdain", in R. Lehmann et al. (eds.) Orion (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1945) vol. 1, p. 2.

"Ritual Abuse, Hot Air, and Missed Opportunities: Science Views Media" http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote01.html - Speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anaheim, California (25 January 1999)

Rebelling Within Nature http://lesswrong.com/lw/s5/rebelling_within_nature/ (July 2008)

3 June 2009
Fully Ramblomatic

Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 6-7; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

To Leon Goldensohn, after being asked if Himmler trusted anyone (13 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Pt. I line 83-84.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

she asked. "Everything was going well a moment ago."
Emboldened by the presence of the newcomers, Chia Lien became more menacing. Phoenix, on the other hand, quieted herself and left the scene to seek the protection of the Matriarch. She threw herself sobbing into the Matriarch's arms and said, "Save me, Lao Tai-tai. Lien Er-yeh wants to kill me."
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 198–199

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/basic-instinct-2-2006 of Basic Instinct 2 (31 March 2006)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Original French:La situation est difficile. Rien n'est encore tranché. Les manœuvres des adversaires de notre intégrité territoriale ne vont pas s'arrêter , ce qui pourrait placer notre cause devant des développements décisifs. Par conséquent, je vous exhorte tous –encore une fois- à une forte mobilisation, une vigilance de tous les instants, et des initiatives efficaces, aux niveaux interne et externe, pour contrecarrer les ennemis de la nation où qu'ils se trouvent, et pour déjouer les stratagèmes illégitimes auxquels ils ont recours.
Speech before the Moroccan lower house of parliament 11 October 2013 http://www.maroc.ma/en/royal-speeches/full-text-hm-kings-speech-opening-first-session-third-legislative-year-ninth

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rollerball-2002 of the 2002 film Rollerball (8 February 2002)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

"Oh No Lev Grossman No", in Making Light (30 August 2009)

143
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=58 of Godzilla (1998).
One-and-a-half star reviews

as quoted in Herbert Kroemer's Autobiography http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/kroemer-autobio.html, The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000.

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.29-30

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness; "What is too silly to be said may be sung" is a commonly used translation or paraphrase of lines from Act I, Scene ii of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre de Beaumarchais, which was the basis of famous operas.

Editorial in New York Tribune (Feb. 16, 1877).

On teenagers.
Monster (2004)

"A Conversation with My Father" (1972)

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 148.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

President Bush Rejects Artificial Deadline, Vetoes Iraq War Supplemental http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070501-6.html (May 1, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 2 (p. 215)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

Arlene Croce, in Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, W.H. Allen, London, 1974. p. 7. ISBN 0491001592.

Bayes, Act III, sc. i
The Rehearsal (1671)

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-life-of-david-gale-2003 of The Life of David Gale (21 February 2003)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

“Concealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology,” pp. 148-149.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Source: The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (2008), p. 54.

a fake quote debunked on several websites, including metabunk.org https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-theres-a-plot-in-this-country-to-enslave-every-man-woman-and-child-jfk.t319/
Misattributed

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

"The Case for an Anti-Abortion Violence Registry," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/the-case-for-an-anti-abor_b_222559.html The Huffington Post (2009-06-29)

on rumours that he had helped to finance the coup d'état fronted by George Speight in May 2000
Interview with World Investment News http://www.winne.com/fiji/vi04.html, 21 January 2003 (excerpts)

The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays, 2006-11-19 http://richarddawkins.net/article,326,Atheists-The-New-Gays,Scott-Adams--Dilbertblog,

page 38

Scaffold speech (1683)

Remarks by the President at Missouri Victory 2006 Rally http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061103-1.html (November 3, 2006)
2000s, 2006

Watching Water

Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge University Press: 2008), p. 63

Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Page 161
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

From Disc Two; Behind the Scenes: Jonah and the Bible (00:00:00-00:00:21)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 2. A Busy World (p. 36)

The Calendar Hung Itself
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ballast-2008 of Ballast (29 October 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Lauren Keeport (February 3, 1998) "Scandal feeds maelstrom of Clinton jokes - 'Monicagate' a windfall for TV wits", The Washington Times, p. A2.

An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 22)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Tommy Lee Wallace on Crafting His Miniseries Masterpiece, IT https://dailydead.com/stephen-king-week-tommy-lee-wallace-on-crafting-his-miniseries-masterpiece-it/ (October 27, 2015)

What is Americanization? (1919)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Joy in the Morning (1947)

Stanza 1
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

Powell's Books http://www.powells.com/authors/hawke.html (2002-08-06)
2000–2004

Introduction : The absurdity of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)
Context: The "poetic avant-garde" relies on fantasy and dream reality as much as the Theatre of the Absurd does; it also disregards such traditional axioms as that of the basic unity and consistency of each character or the need for a plot. Yet basically the "poetic avant-garde" represents a different mood; it is more lyrical, and far less violent and grotesque. Even more important is its different attitude toward language: the "poetic avant-garde" relies to a far greater extent on consciously "poetic" speech; it aspires to plays that are in effect poems, images composed of a rich web of verbal associations.
The Theatre of the Absurd, on the other hand, tends toward a radical devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays an important part in this conception, but what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters. In Ionesco's The Chairs, for example, the poetic content of a powerfully poetic play does not lie in the banal words that are uttered but in the fact that they are spoken to an ever-growing number of empty chairs.

Black Boy (1945)

I. Introduction : Struggle of Spirits.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)
Context: Contemporaneous with the awakening of the interest of the great masses of the German people in Parsifal, a flood of newspaper articles about Parsifal have begun, of which, most have no trace of a hint of the deep deep mystical meaning of the plot and the symbology of the play is lost. The great masses of the Parsifal-critics and Parsifal-commentators, who have not a trace of a hint of the deep mystical meaning of the secret of the graal, are not even the worst enemies of Wagner and the Idea of Parsifal. The real worst, by which I mean here, the dangerous enemies of Wagner's are those people — columnists, critics, interpreters etc. — who surely have no clue of deep mystical meaning of Parsifal — and the idea of the Graal, but go against the recognized meaning, or purposely change the true and only really deep meaning of the Parsifal idea into its exact opposite meaning. The worst of the last category are the sexual-ascetics. For they understand the meaning of the Parsifal-Symbology very well, but they reverse Wagners idea into its exact opposite. They are those, who on the basis of the plot of the play Parsifal and on the false understanding of its underlying mystery, proclaim sexual abstinence to the German people, far and wide as the gospel of renunciation, and they knowingly lay the foundation for the decline of the virulent German people. If it has not yet succeeded, it is high time to pull the carpet out from under the feet of these false prophets.

Ur-Fascism (1995)
Context: At the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

"Future widows of America: Write your congressman" in Jewish World Review (28 September 2001).
2001
Context: Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims — at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours.
How are we to distinguish the peaceful Muslims from the fanatical, homicidal Muslims about to murder thousands of our fellow citizens?

"Zion's Vital Signs" in The Atlantic (November 2001) http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/11/o_rourke.htm

Book V, 1313b.16
Politics

Black Boy (1945)

"Introduction" to The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973)<!-- , p. ix -->
The Last Question (1956)
Context: "The Last Question" is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
No other story I have written has anything like this effect on my readers — producing at once an unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly full, that they can retain none of the side-issues.

About Inland Empire, from The Independent: David Lynch: In odd we trust http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-lynch-in-odd-we-trust-439801.html
Context: There is a plot. What would be the point of just a bunch of things? There's a story, but the story can hold abstractions. I believe in story. I believe in characters. But I believe in a story that holds abstractions, and a story that can be told based on ideas that come in an unconventional way.

Native Son (1940)

"Laughing with a Mouth of Blood"
Actor (2009)

In recognition of van Vogt receiving the Grand Master designation in 1996, in The Nebula Awards Vol. 31, as quoted in SF Authors Remember A.E. van Vogt (2000) http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2000/ARTICLES/20000128-03.htm#SF%20Authors%20Remeber%20A.E.%20van%20Vogt
Context: Even the brightest star shines dimly when observed-from too far away. And human memory is notoriously unreliable. And we live in ugly times when all respect for that which has gone before suffers crib death beneath the weight of youthful arrogance and ignorance. But a great nobility has at last, been recognized and lauded. Someone less charitable than I might suggest the honor could have been better appreciated had it not been so tardy, naming its race with a foe that blots joy and destroys short-term memory. But I sing the Talent Electric, and like aft the dark smudges of history, everything but the honor and die achievement remains for the myth-makers.
Alfred E. van Vogt has been awarded the Grand Master trophy of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is not the to first person to receive this singular accolade…given only to those whose right to possess it is beyond argument or mitigation.
Were we in 1946 or even 1956, van Vogt would have already been able to hold the award aloft. Had SFWA existed then and had the greatest living sf authors been polled as to who was the most fecund, the most intriguing, the mast innovative the most influential of their number, Isaac and Arthur and Cyril and Hank Kuttner and Ron Hubbard would all have pointed to the same man, and Bob Heinlein would've given him a thumbs-up. Van Vogt was the pinnacle, the source of power and ideas; the writer to beat. Because he embodied in his astonishing novels and assorted stories what we always say is of prime importance to us in this genre-the much vaunted Sense of Wonder.
Van Vogt was the wellspring of wonder. … That's how important he was. … And then came the dark years during which the man was shamefully agented and overlooked; and even the brightest star loses its piercing light if observed through the thickening mists of time and flawed memory.
Now it is lifetimes later, and the great award has, at last, been presented. To some, less charitable than I, something could be said about a day late and a dollar short, but not I. I am here to sing the Talent Electric, and it is better now than never. He is the Grand Master, A. E. can Vogt, weaver of a thousand ideas per plot-line, creator of alien thoughts and impossible dreams that rival the best ever built by our kind.
This dear, gentlemanly writer whose stories can still kill you with a concept or warm you with a character, now joins the special pantheon.

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

New Mindset on Consciousness (1987)
Context: Science traditionally takes the reductionist approach, saying that the collective properties of molecules, or the fundamental units of whatever system you're talking about, are enough to account for all of the system's activity. But this standard approach leaves out one very important additional factor, and that's the spacing and timing of activity — its pattern or form. The components of any system are linked up in different ways, and these possible relationships, especially at the higher levels, are not completely covered by the physical laws for the elementary interactions between atoms and molecules. At some point, the higher properties of the whole begin to take over and govern the fate of its constituents.
A simple way to illustrate this idea is to imagine a molecule in an airplane flying from L. A. to New York. The molecule may be jostled somewhat or held in position by its neighbors, but these lower-level actions are trivial compared to its movement as the plane flies across the continent. If you plot the movement of the molecule through time and space, those features governed by the higher properties of the plane as a whole make those controlled at the level of the molecule insignificant by comparison. The higher properties control the lower, not by direct intervention, but by supervention.

Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity (1963), p. 29

Black Boy (1945)

"Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," ll. 19-25
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.

Arrowsmith (1925)
Context: Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me—oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist.
To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

quoted in Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

On attending school after she immigrated with her family from Colombia to the United States in “tatiana de la tierra” ( Making Queer History https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2019/5/14/tatiana-de-la-tierra; 2019 May 14)

On how she writes characters in “Motherhood and Migration: An Interview with Vanessa Hua on ‘A River of Stars’” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motherhood-and-migration-an-interview-with-vanessa-hua-on-a-river-of-stars/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2018 Sep 13)

On her initial struggles to become a novelist in “Ruth Ozeki: Neither here nor there” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/ruth-ozeki-neither/ in The Writer (2017 Feb 24)

On using an epistolary form for her short story “Children of the Sea” in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Theresa May offers MPs Brexit delay vote https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47373996 BBC News (26 February 2019)
2019

Gideon Hausner as quoted in The New York Times (27 June 1961).

Lost in Math, Chapter 4, p. 78, 2018 hardcover ed.
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018)

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), pp. 714-715

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

E.M. Forster, Aspects of The Novel (1927)

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

On poets having certain freedoms in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)

Roger Ebert, reviewing Barker's film Hellraiser https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hellraiser-1987, The Chicago Sun Times, September 18, 1987

Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. “Don’t you see? It’s the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.”
Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 390; spoken by the Devil, named Jonathan Sarkos in the book)

"Samantha: I am done with clichéd heroine roles" https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/Samantha-I-am-done-with-clich%C3%A9d-heroine-roles/article14378258.ece. The Hindu. (May 31, 2016).

Letter to William Weddell (31 January 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 52-53
1790s

So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.
Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

"Wong Kar-wai by Han Ong" in Bomb Magazine (1 Janaury 1998) https://bombmagazine.org/articles/wong-kar-wai-1/

Source: Introduction to Hawk’s Hill in Marion Zimmer Bradley (ed.), Sword and Sorceress 7 (1990), p. 183