Quotes About Emotion

I would like to say to those who think of my pictures as serene, whether in friendship or mere observation, that I have imprisoned the most utter violence in every inch of their surface.

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.

When you write, bleed copiously from an open wound. Write from the depths of your heart.

Reading is to an author as listening to music is to a composer. There's music in the words.

A good read is like dancing a tango with the author. You feel the music, give yourself over, move in unison to the music of words. ~ Mark Rubinstein

A novel need not impart information or inform. It must seduce & snare the reader with feelings & break the reader's heart.

Make your novel's opening sentence beautiful, one that hooks the reader, and have your last sentence refuse to let the reader go.

You can't just shove the past aside. It stays with you, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

Plot-driven or character-driven, a novel must grab the reader's emotions and not let go til the final word.

A good novel is an intensely personal rendezvous between reader and writer.

First draft, use your heart. Revision, use your head

You know you've been writing from the heart when, in the midst of a story, you ask, 'What would my mother think of this?

When you really get down to it, good writing (or good art of any kind) taps deeply into feelings more than anything else.

A good novel is like a fairy tale, a movie, a play, a jazz piece & a symphony resonating in the mind, each in its own way.

People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.

Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of sense and nonsense.

The language-based portion of the brain (the left frontal cortex) "gets" the joke by recognizing the ambiguity, incongruity, and surprise of the humor. The emotional areas of the brain (such as the amygdala) appreciate the humor and trigger laughter.

My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake.

Everyone loves to be loved.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyway? Can anyone die without even a little?

Emotions are like a boomerang.

Pino was seized by something much more compelling and primal, as if Anna were not human but a spirit, a melody, a perfect instrument of love.

What could make me not listen to the music in my heart every time I see you?