Stuff from an author's notebook.

[AG31]

I got this from Snow Job by William Deverell.

"...he looked just like John Wayne, he had the same confident way of moseying..."

And while reading that same book, which features a nudist camp, I thought of something I'd put in my own writer's notebook if I were into humorous legal thrillers:

"...flipping and flopping, swinging and swaying of all sizes..."

 

[Comshaw]

A bit off-topic and I apologize, but I gunna' do it anyway.

I have a tendency to collect quotes that make me stop and think. Some come from surprising sources. I've read many a Louis L'Amour book. And to be frank I've enjoyed them all. So when I ran into this gem it made me step back and go hmmmm...

"Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself."

Louis L'Amour



Comshaw

 

[AG31]

Two from Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

"She was being reduced to a quivering heap of cliche."

" 'Yes, I'm good,' she said, clambering back into her brain."

I think those could have been conceived in isolation and waited in a wrtier's notebook for the write context, but they were so delightful in context, I'll try to give you a hint here.

One of the MCs is a somewhat sardonic police officer. She uncharacteristically falls for another character literally at first sight. This works, in part, because Atkinson is an exceedingly competent and literate writer, and things like this don't typically happen.to her main characters. The MC is struck three or four times by how "handsome" the guy is.and then there's this:

Reggie was disquieted to realize that Ben with a weapon in his hand was even more attractive than Ben without one. And that his knowledge of weapons was -- she could hardly bring herself to think the word -- sexy. She had hitherto thought of herself -- essentially -- as a pacifist, and furthermore untroubled by the idea of a man in uniform. Not that he was in a uniform, but he probably had one somewhere. And a dress uniform for reunion dinners and so on. She wondered what he looked like in it. Devastatingly handsome. She was being reduced to a quivering heap of cliche. She had to get a grip, she really did.

Well, I hope it came across a little bit.

 

[AG31]

"looming over him...like a grizzly that had learned to fold its arms.
A Good Man Gone Bad by Gar Anthony Williams

 

[Kelliezgirl]

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.
- Steven Erikson

 

[Comshaw]

“What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...”
Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried

 

[AG31]

<he, at the dinner table with his younger brother> pointed a judgmental stalk of celery.
Marc Cameron, Bad River

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I think this fits in with what was asked for. In any case, the thread had Dylan Thomas up front, and this is one of his best. It also, to me, captures perfectly the writer's soul - the ending is sublime.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

​

 

[AG31]

Two from The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

a crescendo of irony

the small room settled into silence

 

[AG31]

Another from The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

A very timid character is "afraid of beige."

 

[AG31]

"There are...the succulent first tips of hyacinths.

Carla Hunter - No Way Out

 

[Belegon]

I have a phrase from a song by the Austin, TX band Married With Sea Monsters that I've wanted to make into a tattoo for quite awhile now. Thinking of putting it on my right ribcage, but still haven't decided on a font or style....

"Enough whiskey to drown the butterflies, and the last of my common sense."

 

[AG31]

Woman to a man. "I'm nowhere in this woman's league."
"There are no leagues. There's only the moment.

"Could be a heapin' helping of hope.."

Both from Chain Reaction by James Byrne

 

[AG31]

About a group of singers, outdoors, in the middle distance, "Their voices twine together and climb into the sky."

Vanishing by Jodi Picoult

 

[AG31]

There were two hooks for keys, one labeled Car 1 and, weirdly, the other labeled Car B.

From Gatekeeper by James Byrne.

 

[AG31]

"She gave him the look mothers develop to suppress silliness."

Easeful Death, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

 

[AG31]

"When he attempts to read for a time, the sentences are too slippery and he can't get a purchase on them."
Alex North - The Man Made of Smoke

 

[iwatchus]

My notebook is filled with Rap & Hip Hop lyrics. Most of it is from before my time

How to make someone (me) feel very old. ALL of rap and hip hop is after my time. If they weren't performing in 1969, I probably don't know them.

 

[AG31]

Auntie Lah is a dumpy shope keeper in her sixties. She's asked to dinner by one of her elderly long time customers.

"The sixteen year-old girl who still resided in Auntie Lah sent out a smile that lit up the whole room."

 

[AG31]

"<the road had> protruding rocks and gaping potholes that he simply rolled over as if he had a noodle for a spine."

Paul Doiron, Skin and Bones

 

[AG31]

"She eventually fell into a thin version of sleep,..."

Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

And from the same book. "Go ahead, I'm ready." It may not sound like a stand-alone notebook note, but I could imagine the whole book being built around the scene where someone says this.

 

[SkyBubble]

Ah, yes. The wonderful Dylan Thomas.

'One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' - A Child's Christmas in Wales

The standard Christmas Eve celebration in our house when I was a boy included listening to a recording of Dylan Thomas himself reading this.

"Oh, easy for Leonardo!"

 

[SkyBubble]

With poets, almost everything they write tries to be an apt phrase.

T.S. Eliot writes about that in his Four Quartets.

 

[SkyBubble]

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

 

[SkyBubble]

"He had all the virtues but the necessary ones and all the vices but the forgivable ones."