Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Story writing has an elusive quality that cannot be easily defined or taught.
In this quote, John Steinbeck expresses his belief that the art of story writing possesses a unique, almost magical essence that resists formulaic instruction. He suggests that despite many attempts to create a definitive guide for writing stories, the intricacies of storytelling are deeply personal and cannot be universally transferred or replicated among individuals.
Themes
StorytellingWritingArtCreativityImagination
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a workshop about creative writing to emphasize the unique nature of storytelling.
More from John Steinbeck
All quotes →At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
John SteinbeckRead
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John SteinbeckRead
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
John SteinbeckRead
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
John SteinbeckRead
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
John SteinbeckRead
Similar quotes
Years ago, I thought up the name Queen...It's just a name, but it's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid...It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.
Freddie MercuryRead
Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. _x000D_ They are supersensitive. _x000D_ They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, _x000D_ long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.
Kurt VonnegutRead
Im interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think its the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really cant be this way.
Roy LichtensteinRead
The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
Patti SmithRead
Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine.
Bob DylanRead
To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.
Bertrand RussellRead