Chris Speck > Chris's Quotes

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, "Is it tame?" Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great.”
― Barry Hines, A Kestrel for a Knave

“You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it.”
― Tom Winton

“I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories