Nicolas Gray

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”
― Lorrie Moore

“First take a play that you like and musicalize it. Then take a play that you like but you feel has flaws and try to improve them, and musicalize it,” Sondheim recalled him saying. “Then he said, ‘Take something that is not a play but that somebody else has written, a novel or a short story, so that you don’t have to invent the characters or plot, and musicalize that, make it into a play. Dramatize it. And then finally write an original, your own story, and dramatize that.”
― Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables