Visual Writing Quotes

“Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“I want to say something comforting, but I know that this is one of the moments when words would be like an appendix—superfluous or harmful.”
― Harlan Coben, Don't Let Go

“he dragged her like a string of cans behind the wedding car”
― Eoin Colfer, The Arctic Incident

“Between the thermals, downdrafts, and quirky winds, I wasn’t sure how anybody kept the things aloft except with a liberal application of positive thought.”
― Craig Johnson, The Cold Dish

“Mom could have been a great sniper if she had chosen that line of work.”
― Neal Shusterman, Bruiser

“Sometimes opportunity has the shelf life of a Twinkie in a pigpen.

-from The Jesus Cow”
― Michael Perry

“He did not need to ask how she knew his surname; she had taken it from him along with certain other things, such as his heart, when he had kissed her.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“But what about the play?” Emily asks, her impossible legs over the back of the couch. Emily has never been able to sit on furniture like a normal person. I lost that fight when she was still a child. Whoever installed her interior compass put the magnet in upside down.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“I'm a picture of abject fear. If I had my choice between flying to El Paso or getting a colonoscopy, I'd have to think about it.”
― John Sandford, Golden Prey

“His beard is big and thick and curly and dirty-white, so that it looks as though he were eating a sheep when the photograph was taken.”
― Harlan Coben, Win

“Jean made the seventies seem like some weird, mystical time, like a Redneck Camelot.”
― Ace Atkins, The Revelators

“Most folks didn’t like Skinner. And those who did called him an acquired taste. Like sardines. Or the music of Jim Nabors.”
― Ace Atkins, The Revelators

“Klute Sorensen’s recent sleeplessness wasn’t solely attributable to the fact that his CPAP roamed his face like a possessive octopus.

-from The Jesus Cow”
― Michael Perry

“The weapon’s rounds tore through it like an angry child stabbing a gingerbread house with a screwdriver.”
― Brad Thor, Use of Force

“Hostas were the hot fudge sundaes of the deer world.”
― John Sandford, Masked Prey

“I wish I had a secret I could let you in on, some formula my father passed on to me in a whisper just before he died, some code word that has enabled me to sit at my desk and land flights of creative inspiration like an air-traffic controller.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Leslie’s leathers and dirty hair would be chic in a biker bar but in the glittery galleria she looked as seemly as a dead toenail in a pair of strappy sandals.”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“If forgetfulness were a sport, I’d have a shoe contract.

-from Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace”
― Michael Perry

“There is this male tendency to believe that somehow the initial two weeks of snappy dressing, full eye contact, and best behavior will balance out thirty years of holey underwear, mumbling, and anatomic decline. It is one thing to be a work in progress, quite another to be a work in regress. Familiarity is no excuse for lowering your standards.

- from Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace”
― Michael Perry

“Esben Igiby was seeping into Janner’s thoughts, and there was no way to seal the leak.”
― Andrew Peterson, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness

“Virgil was not a man to take time to look at the stars, not when he might miss a nickel on the ground in the process.”
― John Connolly, The White Road

“[Neruda’s] work captures the everyday life of regular people in the Little Quarter. Completely changed but unchanged, its cobble and brick outlines, the colorful contents whirling in a time-lapse blur.”
― Rick Pryll, La Chimère of Prague

“... and the trees covered the sky a little more each year.”
― Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

“The pale blue evening light of fading shadows crashes violently against the hill behind the town—facing radical orange and poisoned greens. It steams upward against a bluish sky that has swallowed every cloud in this modern summer May.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song