Quotes & Sayings About Literary Devices

HASH: There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. — Ambrose Bierce

If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred. — Baruch Spinoza

Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.

It's that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides. — Sandy Vaile

Rad had written a two-sentence response for his comparison/contrast between Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea:

"The fishermen lost their fish, and that was IT. Nothing to write books about, and the 'literary devices' you want listed are nothing but made-up complications for a useless major. — Emm Oh

In my experience when critics raise these objections, they invariably violate one of seventeen principles for interpreting the Scriptures ... For example, assuming the unexplained is unexplainable ... failing to understand the context of the passage ... assuming a partial report is a false report ... neglecting to interpret difficult passages in light of clear ones; basing a teaching on an obscure passage; forgetting that the Bible uses nontechnical, everyday language; failing to remember the Bible uses different literary devices ... — Norman Geisler

No, Ben. What I'm asking is: Are you the vehicle, and Georgie rides around in you? That is why Ben's the driver, right? — Jonathan Harnisch

In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately. — Ernst Jentsch

Suspense doesn't always have to be about physical danger. Making the reader worry is a universal concept that can be applied to any story. — Sandy Vaile

His studies were always second to Beatrice. He would've said everything was second to Beatrice but the flowery metaphors and literary devices can only stretch so far and for so many characters. — Bruce Crown

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology. — Charles Petzold

God is a novelist. He uses all sorts of literary devices: alliteration, assonance, rhyme, synecdoche, onomatopoeia. But of all of these, His favorite is foreshadowing. And that is what God was doing at the Cloisters and with Eudora Welty. He was foreshadowing. He was laying traps, leaving clues, clues I could have seen had I been perceptive enough. — Lauren F. Winner

Books. It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling. — Joyce Rachelle

You hold in your hands a very special book. It contains one hundred carnival rides of terror. You must remember: horror can come from any direction. It can be as subtle as a spider web's caress, or as vicious as the drop of an axe blade. It can be grim as the reaper, or as sardonic as, well, Sardonicous. It can wear the garments of science or superstition; can be dressed in the trappings of fantasy or the fancy-free. But always it will terrify. And one of the bluntest of its instruments is the short-short story, one of the most difficult of literary devices to master. Not only must each word be perfect-but each comma and period. Nothing can be wasted. In the hands of master executioners, like the authors who fill this book-it can be deadly. So... Die-and die again- one hundred times... — Martin H. Greenberg