“Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men--that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“There are some stories that you don't tell aloud, that you make up and tell silently to yourself.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“My auntie Chava used to tell me to chew my words before letting them out. "Seven times, Majan," she would say. "Chew them seven times.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“There are many different words inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews.
If you are a rich woman living inside a harem, the world of a poor Christian beggarman is as foreign as China or Abyssinia.
All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of poor fishermen and scheming sultanas, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China and the lands of the jinn.
If we don’t share our stories—trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk—we will all be strangers forever.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. “This . . . mermaid,” he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. “The one who sang to the king at night.” His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn’t tell if anyone but me could hear. “How . . .” he began. “How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?”
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
“Did she despise him,” the Sultan asked, “for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?”
“No, my lord,” I said softly. “She loved him.”
“Do you swear it?” He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
“Yes, my lord. She told me—” I stopped, corrected myself. “She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king—the merman king, my lord—she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him—because of the things you just said, my lord—the queen said, ‘I’m not ashamed of loving him. There’s nothing wrong with loving someone. It’s hating—that’s what’s wrong.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
Susan Fletcher
Born place: in Pasadena, The United States
Born date May 28, 1951
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“THE SEVEN KEY CHARACTERIZATION VARIABLES Think of these as realms, as areas of potential character illumination. Here they are, in no particular order: Surface affectations and personality—What the world sees and perceives about a character, including quirks, ticks, habits, and visual presentation. Backstory—All that happened in the character’s life before the story begins that conspires to make him who he is now. Character arc—How the character learns lessons and grows (changes) over the course of the story, how she evolves and conquers her most confounding issues. Inner demons and conflicts—The nature of the issues that hold a character back and define his outlook, beliefs, decisions, and actions. Fear of meeting new people, for example, is a demon that definitely compromises one’s life experience. Worldview—An adopted belief system and moral compass; the manifested outcome of backstory and inner demons. Goals and motivations—What drives a character’s decisions and actions, and the belief that the benefits of those decisions and actions outweigh any costs or compromises. Decisions, actions, and behaviors—The ultimate decisions and actions that are the sum of all of the above. Everything about your characters depends on this final variable, and the degree to which the character’s decisions, actions, and behaviors have meaning and impact depends on how well you’ve manipulated the first six variables before, during, and after the moment of decision or action.”
― Larry Brooks, quote from Story Engineering: Character Development, Story Concept, Scene Construction
“Screw humanity. I don't give the whole stinking bunch of us more than a couple of generations and good riddance. The universe is better off without us.”
― Ben Elton, quote from Time and Time Again
“Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.”
― quote from Psycho-Cybernetics
“It’s too late,” I tell him, even as my heart is shattering inside my chest at the idea of not seeing him again. “It’s never too late, Eva, I promise. I’ll wait for you, baby, please, just let me explain.” I’m shaking my head at him as a truck passes in front of us and the last thing I hear is, “Evie, I love you, remember that please.” And then the truck has gone and so has Ben. Well, I have.”
― Natalie Ward, quote from Losing Me Finding You
“Inevitably, a story about Soviet food is a chronicle of longing, of unrequited desire. So what happens when some of your most intense culinary memories involve foods you hadn't actually tasted? Memories of imaginings, of received histories; feverish collective yearning produced by seventy years of geopolitical isolation and scarcity...”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
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