Brackett Quotes & Sayings

You have got to play the game with the cards that have been dealt to you, and it is of no use for you to bewail your fate because you don't hold different ones. Look them over, arrange them, and play. You certainly must play them before you will get any others, and you need never expect to have other people's cards. — Anna Brackett

A very simple and useful device is to have a memorandum-book, so small that it can be easily carried in the pocket, to be used instead of your mind to keep note of any errand or any appointment that you may have. The Standard Diary, less than four inches long and less than two and a half inches wide, is one of the best for this purpose ... In fact, such diaries as these, in their wide range of information, would seem to be all that one needs in practical life, the only other book that at all approaches them in this respect being unquestionably Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. — Anna Brackett

No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two
hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist
anywhere in the United States of America. — Leigh Brackett

The cities were sucking all the life of the country into themselves and destroying it. Men were no longer individuals but units in a vast machine, all cut to one pattern, with the same tastes and ideas, the same mass-produced education that did not educate but only pasted a veneer of catchwords over ignorance. Why do you want to bring that back? — Leigh Brackett

If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but a rehash of the best and the oldest. To read Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, and their compeers in prose, is to read in condensed form what all others have diluted. — Anna Brackett

When you are waiting for a train, don't keep perpetually looking to see if it is coming. The time of its arrival is the business of the conductor, not yours. It will not come any sooner for all your nervous glances and your impatient pacing, and you will save strength if you will keep quiet. After we discover that the people who sit still on a long railroad journey reach that journey's end at precisely the same time as those who "fuss" continually, we have a valuable piece of information which we should not fail to put to practical use. — Anna Brackett

A hard-boiled little lamb going to talk a lot of lions out of their dinner, Comyn told himself grimly. — Leigh Brackett

There is a Restlessness springing from the consciousness of power not fully utilized, which must be present wherever there is unused power of whatever kind. This is the restlessness of the germ within the seed, struggling upward and downward towards its proper life.it is a striving full of pain, the cutting of tender flesh by the fetters of the captive as he struggles against their pitilessness. — Anna Brackett

The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel. — Leigh Brackett

I can feel that I'm stronger than him and stand with the left side of my body towards him, feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent. My left hand's palm faces my body, fingers slightly curled as I gather my energy. He probably expects that I'm going to slam it into him as he did me. Instead, I cast my majick out like a net and drag him towards me; the maneuver catches him by surprise and I smile as I pull my arm back to punch him in the face. He stumbles and I'm glad because it means I won't have to lose momentum by jabbing up — Sara Brackett

He who receives a great many letters demanding answer, sees himself as if engaged in a hopeless struggle of one man against the rest of the world. — Anna C. Brackett

Look carefully through all the claims pressing upon you in your complicated life, and decide once and for all what it is that is the one really important and overmastering duty in it, and should be the one dominating aim. Then remember that if you succeed in that, the others, so multifarious, are really no more than the fringe of the garment, and that you need not spend so much anxiety over them, provided that the one most important is faithfully attended to. — Anna Brackett

History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through withits twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become. — Anna Brackett

Witchcraft to the ignorant, ... Simple science to the learned. — Leigh Brackett

There are perhaps only one or two things in the world which are not far more charming in desire than they are in possession. — Anna Brackett

When I write a novel, I am God at my own typewriter, and there is nobody in between. But when I write a screenplay, it must be a compromise because there are so many elements which are outside the writer's province. — Leigh Brackett

Only the flowing water is pure and sweet. Only the spinning top and the moving bicycle do not fall over. Rest is not found in irregular and purposeless motion, nor is it stagnation; all real and firm rest is to be sought in harmonious action. — Anna Brackett

There's never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn't think he was fully justified. That's a mental trick called rationalizing, and it's done the human race more harm than anything else you can name. — Leigh Brackett

Whether it was the stimulus of the radio, or simply that he was growing up, or both, he saw everything about him in a new way, as though he had managed to get a little distance off so that his sight wasn't blurred by being too close. — Leigh Brackett

What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms. — Anna Brackett

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful allyit is. — Leigh Brackett

Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a pejorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favor - closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc., but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks. Ten years late, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but the space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes. — Leigh Brackett

You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectlyfutile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you. — Anna Brackett

Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin. — Leigh Brackett

The more we reduce ourselves to machines in the lower things, the more force we shall set free to use in the higher. — Anna C. Brackett

Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there's an explosion - that's Plot. — Leigh Brackett

Surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. — Leigh Brackett

All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting upon it from the outside to spur it to effort. — Anna C. Brackett

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties. — Anna C. Brackett

Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.' — Leigh Brackett

For poetry and I are one
To separate is to decapitate
For my poetry is forever. — Kerry D. Brackett

Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use. — Anna C. Brackett

He must notice that I'm not understanding. He dips a finger beneath the surface of the water and pulls up; with a vibrant pulse of his majick, the aqua raises him up until he's on something similar to a pillar and face to face with me. Then despite the language barrier, he speaks slowly and adds hand gestures. Like I'm the lake simpleton. The look on my face must pass along how I feel about it because he stops and laughs, reminding me of the sound wooden wind chimes make on a breezy day. It's deep, peaceful, and resonates with my power; my heart stutters from a mini overload, similar to having drunk too much caffeine. — Sara Brackett

We're going to start with the injury report, obviously. Manning, Clark, Addai, Reggie Wayne, Freeney, Mathis, Brackett - all those guys will not play. Oh, hold up. That was my wish list for Santa Claus. — Rex Ryan

Where woman has taken her place in business she has found her method ready-shaped for her, and following that, she does her work,if with a certain amount of monotony, yet without undue fatigue. Her hours are fixed, and as a rule she gets needful change of scene as she goes to her business and returns to her home or the place where she lives. But the "home- maker" has not, nor can she have, any such change, and her hours are always from the rising of the sun beyond the going down of the same. — Anna Brackett

Screenwriting is still a challenge for me. It's more technical than creative. You have to be a very good journeyman plumber and put the proper parts together. Then, if you can still inject a little bit of something worthwhile, you have done as much as can be expected. — Leigh Brackett

We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in. — Anna Brackett

We are always getting ready to live, and never having time enough to live. — Anna Brackett

(I)f you're not honest with yourself, life will never be honest with you. — Leigh Brackett

You can't destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive. — Leigh Brackett

The ways of living have been rendered vastly easier by a multitude of inventions, by the increasing wealth of the country, by better and more intelligent service; and yet life is by no means easier, but indeed hard. The demands on time, whether real or imagined, have increased in a greater ratio than the supply of facilities for answering them, and as the earth provokingly continues to revolve on its axis just as rapidly as of old, the days are never long enough for all the duties which they bring. — Anna Brackett

David will never go to space again. I'm glad.What did it gain the McQuarries? What has it ever gained men? Have men ever brought back more happiness from the stars? Will they ever? — Leigh Brackett