Nancy Kress quote: "When a story is flying along, and I'm so into it that my 'real' world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a 'flow state,' and it's better than publication, money, awards, fame."

A stereotype may be negative or positive, but even positive stereotypes present two problems: They a...
NANCY KRESS

If you're writing a thriller, mystery, Western or adventure-driven book, you'd better keep t...
NANCY KRESS

As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.
NANCY KRESS

Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectua...
NANCY KRESS

The process, not the results, have to be the reason a writer writes. Otherwise, creating a four-hund...
NANCY KRESS

Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two peo...
NANCY KRESS

Many novice writers try to avoid using 'said' by substituting synonyms: 'he uttered,'...
NANCY KRESS

All nonmimetic fiction is a balancing act between 'reality' and the obviously unreal, with n...
NANCY KRESS

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characte...
NANCY KRESS

You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the sam...
NANCY KRESS

Pace, like everything else in writing, involves a trade-off. If you're not offering the reader a...
NANCY KRESS

Your opening should give the reader a person to focus on. In a short story, this person should turn ...
NANCY KRESS

There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, s...
NANCY KRESS

The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these p...
NANCY KRESS

The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture t...
NANCY KRESS

In one sense, every character you create will be yourself. You've never murdered, but your murde...
NANCY KRESS

Conflict drives fiction; no one wants to read a four-hundred-page novel in which everything rolls al...
NANCY KRESS

The climax is the place where the opposing forces in your story finally clash. This is true whether ...
NANCY KRESS

Without coffee, nothing gets written. Period.
NANCY KRESS

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is...
NANCY KRESS

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words a...
NANCY KRESS

Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more c...
NANCY KRESS

Exposition has legitimate uses. It's the most efficient way to summarize background information,...
NANCY KRESS

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the com...
NANCY KRESS

Words change over time. 'Condescending,' for instance, was once a good thing to be. It meant...
NANCY KRESS

If your reader has been given a rousing opening, he will usually then sit still for at least some ex...
NANCY KRESS

In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that some...
NANCY KRESS

Novels have much more space than short stories, which gives you more leeway with the number of chara...
NANCY KRESS

In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nob...
NANCY KRESS

Words that add no new information or aren't repeated for emphasis are just padding. A sentence m...
NANCY KRESS

For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dr...
NANCY KRESS

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illus...
NANCY KRESS

Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal ...
NANCY KRESS

I do hope to be an adult actor. But if it doesn't work out, I've been thinking about doing s...
NATHAN KRESS

I'm a really big 'Lord of the Rings' fan. I have all the extended editions.
NATHAN KRESS

Since I was very young, probably two or three, I had really good memorization skills. I would memori...
NATHAN KRESS

My biggest hobby is airsoft, which is similar to paintball. Essentially, it's military simulatio...
NATHAN KRESS

I do enjoy playing some sports, even though none of them are organized. I enjoy football most of all...
NATHAN KRESS

I'm thankful to say that I already have my dream job. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
NATHAN KRESS

My new obsession is 'Storage Wars.' I don't know how such a simple show concept can be s...
NATHAN KRESS

I got good grades in math, but I never really enjoyed it. My favorite part of math was algebra, but ...
NATHAN KRESS

I'm an outdoorsy guy, but I also enjoy the average teenager stuff - video games, movies, hanging...
NATHAN KRESS

My favorite thing about acting is that I can play all kinds of different people. Frankly, I don'...
NATHAN KRESS

I definitely feel like kids do look up to me as a potential role model. It's an honor, but it ca...
NATHAN KRESS

Everyone else in the 'iCarly' cast can operate on 5 hours of sleep, but not so for 'Old ...
NATHAN KRESS

Note to self: Never leave home without glitter.
ADRIENNE KRESS

When you are from a well-respected family, often times you will have pressure to "live up to your fa...
ADRIENNE KRESS

I would not want to go through this with any other guys.
BRANDON KRESS

We were our own worst enemy. We could have taken this one.
BRANDON KRESS

We were our own worst enemy. We killed ourselves with turnovers.
BRANDON KRESS

we as authors have been writing about people we aren't for forever. We find a way to empathise, we f...
ADRIENNE KRESS

This campaign is also to educate the community that this is here. People who may not think they can ...
ERIC KRESS

We patterned our program after Minnesota's. They have 800 to 1,000 kids in it. Last year, Iowa had a...
ERIC KRESS

The YMCA does not exclude people who want to participate in programs, but who cannot pay full price.
ERIC KRESS

We'd love to get to a place where we're raising as much as we're giving out.
ERIC KRESS

It's a great college resume builder, too, I'd imagine.
ERIC KRESS

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top...
NANCY GIBBS

When I first ran for Congress, I went to my daughter Alexandra, who was going to be a senior in high...
NANCY PELOSI

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacen...
NANCY PEARCEY

I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But ev...
NANCY FRIDAY

All the criticism and all of the praise, it doesn't - it's not worth the salt that goes on m...
NANCY GRACE

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying a...
NANCY PELOSI

When I was growing up, I loved stories in which a girl sets out on a quest to rescue the prince inst...
NANCY WILLARD

In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches...
NANCY WILLARD

Jean Piaget observed that scarcely any question seems absurd to a child, but he was silent on the qu...
NANCY WILLARD

I used to want covers that represented the book's contents very closely and were also pretty. Ma...
NANCY WERLIN

You start thinking about a character in a new book, of course you're going to think pretty soon,...
NANCY WERLIN

I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is ...
NANCY WERLIN

Going back to my own past as a reader, I was a big, big reader of romances, particularly as a teenag...
NANCY WERLIN

There was a mission: To match the cover of 'Extraordinary' to the cover of the paperback ...
NANCY WERLIN

I actually hope people don't react to 'Impossible' in a way where they think it's te...
NANCY WERLIN

No matter how beautiful and loved a cover may be, the jury on it remains uncommitted until the book ...
NANCY WERLIN

'Extraordinary' is an original fairy tale, a contemporary story. But like a traditional fair...
NANCY WERLIN

I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural.
NANCY WAKE

I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don't see why we women should just wave our men...
NANCY WAKE

I adored my father.
NANCY WAKE

I've probably said that in every feature I've been in. I've been repeatedly defined as t...
NANCY TRAVIS

I really enjoy doing sitcom television. It allows me to stay in Los Angeles and spend more time with...
NANCY TRAVIS

The alarming thing in China is the almost total absence of primary care. Even in cities, there are n...
NANCY TRAVIS

To wait for hours to buy a train ticket or to see a doctor is accepted as a normal way of doing thin...
NANCY TRAVIS

I want to do a show about a woman who's juggling a career with a relationship.
NANCY TRAVIS

I wish my real life could be as simple and scripted as it is on television.
NANCY TRAVIS

'The Bill Engvall Show' is a comedy about a middle-class family in the Midwest. It's a g...
NANCY TRAVIS

I love zoo sanctuaries.
NANCY TRAVIS

No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl's heart.
NANCY THAYER

The universe is always speaking to us... sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serend...
NANCY THAYER

Morrissey wrote to me and said, I have a song for you and if we release it as a single, you'll b...
NANCY SINATRA

I wasn't allowed to grow as an artist. My albums were nicer to look at than to listen to.
NANCY SINATRA

I was successful with mediocre material because of a good recording voice that people really liked a...
NANCY SINATRA

I was singing about six notes higher than I had to, in a range that kept me up in a bubblegum sound.
NANCY SINATRA

I was at a party three weeks prior to the murders at Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate's house.
NANCY SINATRA

I was a star in Italy, Austrailia, Germany and Japan before the American stations ever paid attentio...
NANCY SINATRA

I wanted to travel with my dad to be close to him again. Having babies and raising my own family too...
NANCY SINATRA

His last 2 shows in the U.S. were in Chicago and St. Louis. I don't know what made me go on the ...
NANCY SINATRA

Dad really had little to do with the songs, except to perform them.
NANCY SINATRA

Morrissey wrote a really gorgeous song for me. I'm crazy for that man. And he thinks I'm hip...
NANCY SINATRA

I think I've finally proven something to people who were cynical about me. Because they were cru...
NANCY SINATRA

After things started to happen here, my choice of material was extremely limited. It was a weird sit...
NANCY SINATRA

There are a lot of people who would laugh at the idea of me being a good singer.
NANCY SINATRA

Then all of a sudden, Quentin Tarantino comes along and puts a song from 40 years ago in one of his ...
NANCY SINATRA

It would be nice to be on the charts again, nice to be recognised.
NANCY SINATRA

I have never been accepted. I'll never make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They're never go...
NANCY SINATRA

I am the daughter of the Chairman of the Board and thus, was raised with great music.
NANCY SINATRA

Frank's audience doesn't care if a girl singer, a comic or an organ grinder with a monkey op...
NANCY SINATRA

The one hit song that I have tremendous gratitude for is Boots, because it has a life of its own. It...
NANCY SINATRA

I didn't just want to be Frank's daughter who sang Boots. I take my music very seriously and...
NANCY SINATRA

After 50, the rock 'n' roll road is a little absurd. It's very difficult to play these l...
NANCY SINATRA

What happens in the music business is that if you step out of your little spot to do something else,...
NANCY SINATRA

I think most people are aware of the garbage in the tabloids and don't give them a lot of creden...
NANCY SINATRA

I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research uni...
NANCY ROMAN

At Swarthmore, the Dean of Women was very opposed to women going into science or engineering - so op...
NANCY ROMAN

I wondered had I really oversold the Hubble. I have to admit that, since, I have been convinced that...
NANCY ROMAN

My career was quite unusual, so my main advice to someone interested in a career similar to my own i...
NANCY ROMAN

It was probably my parents who inspired me most. My father was a scientist and answered my scientifi...
NANCY ROMAN

I do not remember exactly when I became interested in astronomy, but I know it was at a very young a...
NANCY ROMAN

Looking through the atmosphere is somewhat like looking through a piece of old, stained glass. The g...
NANCY ROMAN

One of the reasons I like working with schools is to try to convince women that they can be scientis...
NANCY ROMAN

I must say acting was good training for the political life which lay ahead for us.
NANCY REAGAN

I'm against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman's choice.
NANCY REAGAN

I have been very happy with my homes, but homes really are no more than the people who live in them.
NANCY REAGAN

The movies were custard compared to politics.
NANCY REAGAN

You just get up each day and put one foot in front of the other and go. You know, each day is differ...
NANCY REAGAN

With Alzheimer's patients, you have to be very careful what you say when you're looking at t...
NANCY REAGAN

I don't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs.
NANCY REAGAN

I'm very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryo...
NANCY REAGAN

It is true that when you're in the White House alone, it is a lonely place. Big and lonely.
NANCY REAGAN

There is no job description for the first lady and she's only there because her husband got elec...
NANCY REAGAN

As I've said before, time is short, and life is precious.
NANCY REAGAN

My life really began when I married my husband.
NANCY REAGAN

Now science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists...
NANCY REAGAN

I do not believe in abortion at will. I do not believe that if a woman just wants to have an abortio...
NANCY REAGAN

I always liked red. It's a picker-upper.
NANCY REAGAN

Just say no to drugs!
NANCY REAGAN

You learn something out of everything, and you come to realize more than ever that we're all her...
NANCY REAGAN

Feminism is the ability to choose what you want to do.
NANCY REAGAN

Being a writer - even a best-selling one - is usually not anywhere near as public as being a movie s...
NANCY PICKARD

Everybody knows now that Marie Lightfoot, the true crime writer, is dating Franklin DeWeese, the sta...
NANCY PICKARD

I'm Marie Lightfoot, or at least that's the name my publisher puts on the covers of the book...
NANCY PICKARD

I live in a little suburb close to Kansas City called Prairie Village, where there's a feeling o...
NANCY PICKARD

I go for drives in the Flint Hills, which is the setting for 'The Virgin of Small Plains'.
NANCY PICKARD

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. ...
NANCY PICKARD

I've lived in Kansas for more than thirty years, and for half of those, I was part of a ranching...
NANCY PICKARD

It's such a joy to talk to a roomful of people who have read my novel and are eager to talk abou...
NANCY PICKARD

I'm not interested in forcing my beliefs on my readers.
NANCY PICKARD

I'm a Midwestern girl, born and bred. It's harder for some of us to write about things close...
NANCY PICKARD

I've known a lot of cowboys and a few cowgirls. They're, by and large, some of the smartest,...
NANCY PICKARD

I love the unexplainable. It would be so boring to me if everything could be explained.
NANCY PICKARD

Democrats believe in reigniting the American dream by removing barriers to success and building ladd...
NANCY PELOSI

In our recovery package we put new standards of accountability and transparency, which we hope will ...
NANCY PELOSI

When taxpayers are subsidizing low wages, people should be aware of that. We're subsidizing an e...
NANCY PELOSI

I really want women to know their power, to value their experience. To understand that nothing has b...
NANCY PELOSI

I don't care how popular I am. I'm not putting myself out there to run for higher office.
NANCY PELOSI

The American dream is about freedom.
NANCY PELOSI

Let's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politic...
NANCY PELOSI

If you don't vote, you don't count.
NANCY PELOSI

Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.
NANCY PELOSI

The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries.
NANCY PELOSI

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.
NANCY PELOSI

Being the first woman speaker and breaking the marble ceiling is pretty important. Now it's time...
NANCY PELOSI

The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embr...
NANCY PELOSI

America will be far safer if we reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in one of our cities than i...
NANCY PELOSI

We have so much room for improvement. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory......
NANCY PELOSI

Public education grants secular worldviews an exclusive monopoly in the classroom.
NANCY PEARCEY

The Tea Party has imparted political energy to common-sense American constitutionalism.
NANCY PEARCEY

Urban areas tend to attract members of the 'knowledge class' - people who work with ideas, d...
NANCY PEARCEY

The defense of marriage is the defense of freedom. Neither of which is obsolete.
NANCY PEARCEY

Many journalists are influenced by a myopic multiculturalism that is suspicious of anything Western,...
NANCY PEARCEY

The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to...
NANCY PEARCEY

My aim in homeschooling is to give my children the ability to be an adult learner, a skill set that ...
NANCY PEARCEY

Pro-lifers have long been castigated for bringing private values into the public square. But actuall...
NANCY PEARCEY

Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 't...
NANCY PEARCEY

Homeschoolers are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers. They are self-motivated and self-directed, indepen...
NANCY PEARCEY

America is a knowledge-based society, where information counts as much as material resources. Theref...
NANCY PEARCEY

Schools ought to teach students to challenge secular ideologies masquerading as science in the class...
NANCY PEARCEY

If pro-abortionists want to commit intellectual suicide and deny scientific facts, that's their ...
NANCY PEARCEY

The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest co...
NANCY PEARCEY

Modern secular thought has its own dualism: It treats only the physical world as knowable and testab...
NANCY PEARCEY

The White House should always be a friend to American freedom.
NANCY PEARCEY

We do not create marriage from scratch. Instead, in the elegant language of the marriage ceremony, w...
NANCY PEARCEY

America faces a fundamental choice: either the blessings of liberty or the servitude of liberalism. ...
NANCY PEARCEY

Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christian...
NANCY PEARCEY

In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not...
NANCY PEARCEY

I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang. It's so frightfully good I...
NANCY MITFORD

I Love children, especially when they cry for then someone takes them away.
NANCY MITFORD

To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.
NANCY MITFORD

Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?
NANCY MITFORD

I'm no actor. And I wasn't like George Lucas or Spielberg, making home movies as a teenager,...
NANCY MEYERS

I don't want to be known as the one who makes movies for older people.
NANCY MEYERS

I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't kno...
NANCY MEYERS

I really wanted to be a writer.
NANCY MEYERS

My movies are not messed with by the studios.
NANCY MEYERS

I don't diet, I don't do fads, I've just decided to not eat carbs. So no more bread and ...
NANCY MEYERS

I like to eat meals I will remember. Otherwise, what's the point?
NANCY MEYERS

We don't want to be our own niche. We're filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row ...
NANCY MEYERS

There's a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You&#...
NANCY MEYERS

Being part of a team helped me so much. I know the fact that there was a man in the room with me all...
NANCY MEYERS

I don't shoot movies quickly because I get a lot of coverage and a lot of angles, so we have all...
NANCY MEYERS

I've always been blessed with confidence. I am a glass-half-full person. My first movie, 'Pr...
NANCY MEYERS

Normally I don't watch myself, because I'm not very objective.
NANCY MCKEON

I started working at the age of 2, doing commercials and modeling in New York.
NANCY MCKEON

When a story is flying along, and I'm so into it that my 'real' world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a 'flow state,' and it's better than publication, money, awards, fame.

Nancy Kress

Share:

Related

More Nancy Kress