Outline quotes:

Send

Create time for yourself... There are 24 hours in a day... Outline the number to spend on your dreams every day! -- Israelmore Ayivor
Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper. -- Robert Anton Wilson
What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever? -- Thomas Wentworth Higginson
My ideas had been taking a socialistic shape for many years; but they were lacking in definite outline. -- Edward Carpenter
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance. -- George Eliot
I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write. -- J. K. Rowling
Outlining is like putting on training wheels. It gives me the courage to write, but we always go off the outline. -- Hallie Ephron
The more work you put in on your outline and getting the skeleton of your story right, the easier the process is later. -- Drew Goddard
Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate. -- Vince Lombardi
Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology. -- Jacques Derrida
If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline. -- R. L. Stine
I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts. -- Shirley Jackson
If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it's just about getting the outline of the forest. -- Jeff Koons
I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing. -- Barry Schwartz
We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy. -- Nassau William Senior
All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. -- Tom Stoppard
I don't write shows with dialogue where actors have to memorize dialogue. I write the scenes where we know everything that's going to happen. There's an outline of about seven or eight pages, and then we improvise it. -- Larry David
I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line. -- Diana Gabaldon
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline. -- Jacob Bronowski
I write on big yellow legal pads - ideas in outline form when I'm doing stand-up and stuff. It's vivid that way. I can't type it into an iPad - I think that would put a filter into the process. -- Robin Williams
When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water. -- Gwendolyn Brooks
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past. -- Sai Baba
The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances. -- Leonardo da Vinci
I routinely oscillate between exultation and despair. Maybe at the end of the day I feel pretty good about what I've written, but the next morning I see that it's crap. Then I start again - make a new outline, do some more research, try to rethink the whole question. -- Barbara Ehrenreich
A leader is the one who can outline the broad vision and the direction, and say here's where we are going to go, here's why we need to go there, and here's how we are going to get there. A manager is the one who actually gets up under the hood and tunes the carburetor. -- Mike Huckabee
I finally get to the place where the book has matured in my mind and I can hardly wait to start writing it. Then I just sit down and I start. I hit the go button. I have an outline, which is 70 pages, but I don't look at it. I never have to look at it. -- Stephen J. Cannell
I outline in some detail, but even after the outline is done I often get a new idea that is an improvement, so the outline is a living, breathing thing as well. I also re-outline when I'm two-thirds done, to be sure that there is an emotional payoff from all the plot lines and to be sure the story is as tight as it can be. -- Jeff Abbott
I always work from an outline. -- Sarah Mlynowski
Nature has no outline. Imagination has. -- William Blake
A mother's example sketches the outline of her child's character. -- Tim Howard
I write all day and outline stories, a sports mythological universe. -- Kobe Bryant
I write almost purely by instinct. I've never made an outline. -- Steve Erickson
I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never. -- Don DeLillo
I have an outline but never use a teleprompter. That kills the connection. -- Tony Robbins
One guy wanted an outline of my foot. Another guy wanted locks of my hair. -- Nicole Eggert
The way I outline has changed quite a bit from when I first started writing. -- George Stephen
There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form. -- Carson McCullers
I never work from an outline, and often I dont know how the story will end. -- Patricia MacLachlan
Normally, I spend a week on the outline and take two weeks to write the book. -- R. L. Stine
I always work from outline and almost always write out of sequence. It just works for me. -- Paul S. Kemp
After we made love he took a piece of chalk and made an outline of my body. -- Joan Rivers
I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline. -- Donna Leon
If ever I were to have a symbol attributed to me, it would be a heart, the outline! -- Rudolph Valentino
There is a chalk outline slowly being drawn around common sense and most people can't identify the victim. -- Dennis Miller
The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part. -- Jeffery Deaver
I don't think I'm anything like the improviser. I'm not. I do better with at least an outline. -- Kathleen Turner
There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outline all our lives. -- Josephine Hart
Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use. -- Jean Aitchison
If one really thinks about the body as such, there is no possible outline of the body as such. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
We envy others, for we see their lives in broad outline, while forced to live ours in every detail. -- Robert Breault
In the world of your story, your outline is like the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, your characters are all Atheists. -- Jefferson Smith
Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline. -- Margaret Atwood
For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story. -- George Stephen
The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked... -- Chuck Palahniuk
Well, I outline fanatically. I am a long thinker and a slow writer, though I am trying to get faster. -- William Landay
When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not yet completed. -- Sarah Dessen
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. -- Henry David Thoreau
My technique, starting with a quick outline in pencil, is designed to record first impressions, with no time for second thoughts. -- John Newbery
the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making -- Marya Mannes
She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn. -- John Green
I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery. -- Jay McInerney
I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something. -- Neil Gaiman
To all that he touched he gave a new meaning, a new color, a new outline, a new loveliness, and a new poignancy. -- Frederick Delius
When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper. -- Pat Barker
Move out man! Life is fleeting by. Do something worthwhile, berfore you die. Leave Behind a work sublime, that will outline you and time. -- Alfred Armand Montapert
In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure. -- Aristotle
I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers. -- Patricia Reilly Giff
Writing is difficult. It's a time commitment, it's labor and I'd have to get myself to sit down and actually do the work and outline. -- Busy Philipps
I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names. -- Dana Spiotta
This is kind of hard to articulate, but in broad outline, the United States is going to do what the United States has to do. -- Wesley Clark
I had a general outline of subjects. The way I start my days is my husband brings me a thermos of coffee up to the bedroom. -- Lynne Rae Perkins
Thinking through quotes, which to say scouring a range of texts for insight, is one way to outline the process of thinking/feeling through a subject. -- Masha Tupitsyn
I knew the basic outline of the novel [The Dissemblers] and would write whatever scene of the book I felt particularly excited about at the time. -- Liza Campbell
I always work from an outline, so I know all the of the broad events and some of the finer details before I begin writing the book. -- Mercedes Lackey
I don't write with an outline. I don't often know what I'm going to do as I'm writing. And I do everything by feel and by instinct. -- James Frey
When you get ready to write your novel, outline it first. There's nothing worse than getting halfway through and realizing you've painted yourself in a plot corner. -- Janet Evanovich
I don't think I'm good in bed. My husband never said anything, but after we made love he'd take a piece of chalk and outline my body. -- Joan Rivers
Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know." -- Andre Dubus
I used to be an obsessive outliner - figuring that writing without an outline was like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down. -- Robin Wasserman
Each book takes anywhere from two to three years to complete, from concept to outline to final edits. I work on as many as five at a time. -- Danielle Steel
you ask me what I'm looking for, and I outline you. you don't recognize the shape, offer other names. you say my time will come, and I hope. -- David Levithan
I went to this tattoo parlor in the East Village and I got an outline of a violin on my lower back. They call them tramp stamps now. -- Katherine Moennig
An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above. -- Maria Mitchell
Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy. -- Bob Shacochis
The main concern of the study is with the outline of a theoretical system. Its minor variations from writer to writer are not a matter of concern to this analysis. -- Talcott Parsons
SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net. -- Jerry B. Jenkins
I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish. -- James Patterson
Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest. -- Henry Theodore Tuckerman
She felt like a fictional character who'd escaped the book in which her creator had carefully and kindly trapped her, taken a pair of scissors to her outline and leaped, free... -- Kate Morton
I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline. -- Ken Follett
Colouring does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline, on where that is put. -- William Blake
You have to take the basics of feminism and the kind of outline of it and do what you do with it. You have to make things work for your own life. -- Sandra Bernhard
Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds. -- Aimee Carter
To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments. -- Thomas Jefferson
As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail. -- Aristotle
The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying. -- Ken Follett
I try to be self-analytical, both to outline the mistakes I made in my life and try to explain why I did, and the things that on balance I did pretty well on. -- William J. Clinton
I shall praise those faces which seem to project out of the picture as though they were sculptured, and I shall censure those faces in which I see no art but that of outline. -- Leon Battista Alberti
The page we have in our colouring book may appear to have a similar outline but we all vary in the way we fill in the space. Diversity keeps us interesting.Celebrate your differences. -- Truth Devour
It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration. -- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end. -- Tom Robbins
--
I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path. -- Sara Shepard
Ignorance of God's prophetic outline, failure to know God's program for the Church, the nations, and Israel, is the cause of the overwhelming amount of error and misunderstanding of the events of the future. -- M. R. DeHaan
Look at the subject as if you have never seen it before. Examine it from every side. Draw its outline with your eyes or in the air with your hands, and saturate yourself with it. -- John Baldessari
All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. -- Tom Stoppard
Okay. Now you have to move your arms and legs." "I know how to make a snow angel." "Then do it! Otherwise, you're more like a chalk outline at a police crime scene. -- Richelle Mead

Send