Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.
quote by Flannery O'Connor
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Mirror Image
How many times when reading a book,
do we identify with the characters within?
Their traits they have we share,
their loves and heartaches
their lives go through somehow mirror our own.
It’s as if the author was writing about us.
As though he has put us under a microscope
and then writing down everything, he saw.
However, we know this isn’t so
because he or she has written
segments of their own life
and by accident they happen to mirror ours.
Every writer will tell you
that they have their characters under control.
Having written numerous novels,
I know the characters take on a life of their own
and do what they want to do.
We become their instrument as they guide us on our way.
We end up writing what they want us to say.
To every writer his characters are real,
they live, breathe and feel.
The more you write about them,
the more alive they become.
So the next time you pick up a book
and the characters seem real,
they probably are to the author
who looks after them.
24 September 2008
poem by David Harris
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their natural and surest support.
quote by James Madison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
quote by James Madison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I wouldn't describe that ""position"" as ""parasitic."" I'd describe that experience as ""edifying."" I don't merely write from a critical intellectual distance. I actually live around here.
quote by Bruce Sterling
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Total Lunar Eclipse February 20 inspired Poem
Lucy waits for the full moon
to be totally covered up
before letting him utter
secretly to her 'we are one'.
in less than three seconds,
her world lightens, brightens up
as the earth slowly, surely lifts
the veil of darkness to let the sun
shower its warm and edifying grace
over his satelite and consort
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Payment for good behavior
Payment for good behavior
Need is a reality which can come in any one’s life.
At such occasion somebody gave me money letter I returned the money to him.
Next time another man gave me
Money,
Good behavior,
And nice words full sympathy.
We take breakfast also on the table where the deal was accomplished.
Later I returned his money but I had no words to pay for his good behavior and nice words
To which he offered me at my difficult time.
I realize that we can pay for good behavior only by good behavior not by money.
poem by Vijay Gupta
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Sacrificial Lamb Basted Lambasted
Lambasted for the sacrifice by some
A final throe, brown eyes forever stilled:
Mist where whistful look had, peaceful, willed
Beatitude, not butcher's knife. Voice dumb,
Alas no longer heard by herd, become
Silent alike to day and night. Fulfilled
Time lent, throat rent, knife strife with sharp stroke killed:
EDifying insight on what Man has become.
(4 April 2012)
poem by Jonathan Robin
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The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief — optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.
quote by Arthur Miller
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.
quote by Nicholas Sparks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
quote by Anne Tyler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A New Meeting
make my life
easy
i shall flow as lightly as a feather
in the sky without rain
and the only way to do it
is you make yours busy
stay away from the house
and let all those details
do not destruct you
nor distract me with your
complaints for the hardness of words
the dis-edifying structures of our
faiths
think: we dignify ourselves too with
distance
we erect walls and pillars apart
for the space to
breathe
the nearness of you sometimes
is actually
a contempt of so much
intimacy
think: love is always sweeter the third
time around
the second did not work that well
we have abused
love that much with
promises
of independence
so? go and i too go my way
tonight we meet as a new set of strangers
asking names
for new brands of coffee
when i look at you again
pretend
there is none of us and only then
can we be true again
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Yearnings of the longest day and night!
Nameless; she herself dares her, secret kiss…
Softly, tenderly, he tinkles like a gentle rain fall.
Falling down the chimney, its then senses sizzle…
She calls come this solstice at owl, call.
Like those embers that fizzle…
Back to full Burning-flame.
"Burst with desire my darling, I entreat you…
Arrive, when I' whisper your secret name".
She begs yet more' of his, edifying passions.
"O emanate now' my love, fan my blue coals…
"Come—sojourn my mysterious, silent one.
Here where silence reverberates and moans".
poem by Mark Heathcote
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We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao. What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.
quote by Karen Armstrong
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
quote by Franklin P. Adams
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.
quote by Bill Cosby
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I think it's definitely beneficial for these characters to have good acting voices behind them and it affects the characters in a way that people can feel like they're part of the game and that they know these characters.
quote by Tara Strong
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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how that Sunday ended
the waves are bigger than my dreams
i sit on the sandy shore waiting
you come like a shadow of an afternoon Sunday
broad and firm and strong as you claim yourself
in a name carved in stone
it is late and i am weak
you run to the sea and plunge yourself
you wave your hand before that
i am looking at the horizon
and then the sunset completes itself
with your silence
in that single splash
i think it is horrible but on the other hand
it is divine
i cannot remember how that Sunday ends
i will again say it ends with the splash and then the edifying silence
let me stop and think awhile, a moment of silence
how can i tell you that there is this deleted version of the story
in trembling i arrive home and then i scream
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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how Sunday ended upon its own trembling
the waves are bigger than my dreams
i sit on the sandy shore waiting
you come like a shadow of an afternoon Sunday
broad and firm and strong as you claim yourself
in a name carved in stone
it is late and i am weak
you run to the sea and plunge yourself
you wave your hand before that
i am looking at the horizon
and then the sunset completes itself
with your silence
in that single splash
i think it is horrible but on the other hand
it is divine
i cannot remember how that Sunday ends
i will again say it ends with the splash and then the edifying silence
let me stop and think awhile, a moment of silence
how can i tell you that there is this deleted version of the story
in trembling i arrive home and then i scream
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.
quote by Frederick Wiseman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.
quote by Salvatore Quasimodo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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