Setting The Scene Quotes & Sayings

Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more
let me see
more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps ... As prehistoric ferns grow from bathtub planters. As a shiny new ax, taking a swing at somebody's next year's split-level pinewood pad, bites all the way to the Civil War. As proposed highways break down through the stacked strata of centuries. — Ken Kesey

I doubt if the public thought of me as Christ when they next saw me as Temple Houston on television. — Jeffrey Hunter

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they'll do in any scene you put them in. — Justin Zackham

He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room
unless I was very much mistaken
in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of. — Marian Keyes

awake, then die
in the arms of a modified lover
sleep, then dream
in the absence of a tangible lover
envision, then sing
in the thralls of a hungry lover — A.P. Sweet

For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc. — Darin Strauss

Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene. — Mark Haddon

Beauty is so within. I don't care if you're the most attractive person on the planet ... if you're not good inside, it will show. You fall in love with people from the inside out. — Drew Barrymore

I enjoy setting the scene and coming up with interesting frames. 'True Detective' was a very hands-on set. — Cary Fukunaga

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people
people who supposedly want to write
read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them. — Natalie Goldberg

I like the fact you can spend two hours setting up a scene that will only last a couple of seconds. And I like just sitting around and dozing between scenes! — Mackenzie Crook

Setting can be something that is a major player in a scene, something that makes the mood leap from the page. But if an author doesn't handle it right, it falls flat or seems overdone. It is a challenge getting it "just right". — Kim Smith

I do have rituals. I'm a fairly superstitious person. — Justin Bartha

I try to use all of my senses when describing a setting, and try to think of everything that would impact a character in any given scene. — Mercedes Lackey

Fate, the monstrous scene-shifter, was setting the stage for the death of Uncle Fred, the elderly man. — George Bellairs

What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. — Ayn Rand

The elements of a good story are most definitely details, little bitty details. That does it, especially when you're describing, when you're setting the scene and everything. It's like you're painting a picture, so details are very important. Also, the music gotta be right. The music can really set the tone for the story and let you know what the story is gonna be about, but definitely, it's the vibe in the place where you at and the detail. — Big Boi

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living. — Gay Talese

The actress I had the most fun working with was Alex Kingston. It was a fun relationship to play because it was a combination of occasional sexual harrassment with genuine affection. She's such a terrific actress and such a lovely person. — Paul McCrane

The staircase was a mass of rotting wood, carved with such cruel-looking mermaids that Mr. Jelliby was afraid to put his hand on the banister. — Stefan Bachmann

There is seldom a physical description of a character or scene in Pride and Prejudice and yet we feel that we have seen each of these characters and their intimate worlds; we feel we know them, and sense their surroundings. We can see Elizabeth's reaction to Darcy's denunciation of her beauty, Mrs. Bennet chattering at the dinner table or Elizabeth and Darcy walking in and out of the shadows of the Pemberley estate. The amazing thing is that all of this is created mainly through tone - different tones of voice, words that become haughty and naughty, soft, harsh, coaxing, insinuating, insensible, vain.
The sense of touch that is missing from Austen's novels is replaced by a tension, an erotic texture of sounds and silences. She manages to create a feeling of longing by setting characters who want each other at odds. — Azar Nafisi

I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting ... It can be sometimes that delineated. — Chelsea Cain

Poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion. — Annie Dillard

It's interesting because diversity doesn't just happen by garnishing your omelet with a little bit of parsley. Diversity happens because the people that are telling the stories - the writers, directors, storytellers - want to tell their story. — Kelvin Yu

There have been many things that have set my soul on fire throughout my life. Mainly situated within the different phases I go through. In the past, community work did just that, but right now, since I am in a very self-reflective phase, black artists are setting my soul on fire; especially jazz musicians. Like never before, there is a rise of a young cohort who are blowing the jazz scene apart. My soul blazes because black artists are channels that keep us accountable, heal us and reveal different mysteries to us. — Malebo Sephodi

It's all about greed and money and it's the driving force in Hollywood. — Robert Redford

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason. — Philip Pullman

I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again. — Melissa Bank

Even the juncture in history and the zeitgeist we live in is something we choose, setting the scene for the spiritual fodder we need to grow and achieve deeper elevation of our souls. — Raquel Cepeda

Jaron stood on top of a hill, staring blankly into the distance and taking in every detail of the scene unfolding below him. To his back the sun was setting, casting its last rays over the field below and painting the sky around him in a vast array of red and gold. He shuddered slightly as a cool breeze blew gently through the tall grass of the field, nipping sharply at his cheeks which had gone numb from standing exposed to the elements for too long. It was a seemingly perfect fall day, and he couldn't help but feel that it was somewhat ironic that it was on this day life as he knew it was coming to an end. — K.R. Fajardo

I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favorite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer. When, therefore, he suddenly announced his intention of setting out for the scene of the drama it was only what I had both expected and hoped for. — Arthur Conan Doyle

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop. — John Sandford

Good writers may "tell" about almost anything in fiction except the characters' feelings. One may tell the reader that the character went to a private school (one need not show a scene at the private school if the scene has no importance for the rest of the narrative), or one may tell the reader that the character hates spaghetti; but with rare exceptions the characters' feelings must be demonstrated: fear, love, excitement, doubt, embarrassment, despair become real only when they take the form of events - action (or gesture), dialogue, or physical reaction to setting. Detail is the lifeblood of fiction. — John Gardner

Music is important. — Jessi Colter

We meet before the movie and she gives you charts with sounds on them and makes a tape of examples. While they are setting up the scene, I go with her to the trailer and we go through the scene and correct the speech. — Albert Finney

The jet switched everything, one setting gone and the other there, like a conjuring act. This disorienting and instantaneous change of scene made places seem like channels on TV. — Jim Paul

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are. — George Santayana

I don't know'," he said. "Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage." And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author's craftsmanship. — John William Tuohy

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death. — Thomas Nagel

No wonder simple men have always had their gods dwell in the high places. For as soon as a man lets his eye drop from the heavens to the horizon, he risks setting it on some scene of desolation. — Geraldine Brooks

Jekyll and Hyde, in particular, is such an important novel in terms of suspense and setting a perfect scene for crime — Alanna Knight

Dream, diversify-and never miss an angle. — Walt Disney

This is the "burglar-alarm" theory of bioluminescence: by turning on its lights, an animal may create enough of a scene to draw the attention of its predator's predator, and thereby perhaps save itself. The corollary of the burglar-alarm theory is the minefield theory. It says the reason so many animals tend to hang motionless in the deep, even fish, is to avoid setting off light explosions that would expose them to their enemies - their predators or their prey. Life in the midwater, in this view, is a tense affair (though the denizens do not know it) in which everyone is waiting stealthily in the dark, moving slowly if at all, watching and waiting for someone to turn on a light and for something to happen. — Robert Kunzig

The purple haze of the wych elms; the blue flash of a kingfisher's wings; the statuesque rightness of the milch cows in that green place chomping on the rich flood-grass. — Ronald Frame