Aristotle Plot Quotes & Sayings

I have been sent three or four scripts for television series, but there wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I want to tell a good story, whether it's a TV show, a movie, whatever. That's really my No. 1 criteria. — Jorge Garcia

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies. — Aristotle.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles. — Aristotle.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole. — Aristotle.

I'm no alcoholic. I'm a drunkard. There's a difference. A drunkard doesn't like to go to meetings. — Jackie Gleason

I should choose to be happy. You can choose; you can just throw a switch since, your whole life, it?s just in your brain anyway. It?s just your perception of it. — Matthew Caws

PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION. — Aristotle.

The secret known to two is no longer a secret. — Ninon De L'Enclos

When I was 7 years old I saw Jimmy Connors make someone carry his bag, as though he were Julius Caesar. I vowed then and there that I would always carry my own. — Andre Agassi

I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life. — George Clooney

The unindividualized, shifting mass of everyone else would be a screen, distributed throughout the city, onto which he'd project the movie of his uninterrupted imagination. Because he'd appear to, and be able to pretend he was, but never actually be a part of the mass, maybe he'd gradually begin to feel a kind of needless intimacy, not unlike being in the same room as a significant other and feeling affection without touching or speaking. — Tao Lin

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. — Aristotle.

Papa wasn't man enough, couldn't stand up to his responsibilities. Instead of taking care of me, he'd rather live lavishly. — Tupac Shakur

What I like to do is take something from a man's wardrobe and re-proportion it slightly. We've got another jacket in this collection with a smaller shoulder. It's the idea of subtle feminization, to make the clothes more delicate. — Christophe Lemaitre

I am a hero worshiper. I love the number one tennis player. I love the number one baseball player. I want to see those records broken. — Martha Stewart

On the proper role of coincidence in fiction
- more exactly in storymaking, ... Aristotle declares in effect that since real life now and then includes unlikely coincidences both idle and consequential ... a storymaker may legitimately deploy such a possible-though-improbable happenstance to begin the tale or to give its plot-screws an early turn. Thereafter, however, the Plausible (even when strictly impossible) is ever to be preferred to the Possible-but-Unlikely; and in the resolution of a plot, most particularly, coincidence ought to be eschewed. Fate in fiction, decrees the great A, ought to flow from character and situation, not from chance; let no god on wires drop down at climax-time to rescue the storymaker from whatever dramaturgical corner his want of experience, talent, or judgment has painted him into. — John Barth

Practice moderation in all things except love. — Gary Zukav

Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work. — David Mamet

The one thing we do know is that the chemical imbalance theory - the theory that people get depressed when they don't have enough serotonin in their brain - we know that that's wrong. — Irving Kirsch

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents. — Aristotle.

The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play - which is the better way and shows the better poet. The Plot in fact should be so framed that even without seeing the things take place, he who simply hears the account of them shall be filled with horror and pity at the incidents; which is just the effect that the mere recital of the story in Oedipus would have on one. To produce this same effect by means of the Spectacle is less artistic, and requires extraneous aid. — Aristotle.

More than anything else, I think, Maddie went to war on behalf of the Holy Island seals. — Elizabeth Wein

I believe in an individual soul which travels through eternity. This life is far from all there is
in fact, it is a minute part, simply an antechamber, a deciding place where we choose the light from the dark, where we come to know what we truly value. — Anne Perry

I have always looked for ways to give back because I think it's a responsibility we all share. — Avril Lavigne

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second - compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. — Aristotle.