Detail Quotes

Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

~ Paula Danziger

…this story offers far more than a simple moral of how the meek can trump the mighty.

~ Jerry Pinkney

GOD in not just in the details, He is the detail.

~ Temitope Ibrahim

Programming your mind with positive thoughts each day will go a long way to keep you from allowing external criticism to derail your dreams.

~ Ken Poirot

If on any given day you don't cry from rejoicing in the beauty of the world, then you have not lived that day.

~ Kamand Kojouri

There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one's existence a minor work of art.

~ Pat Conroy

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

~ Orhan Pamuk

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page—rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and guesses at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words—just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its inventors. All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are—accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of human

~ Anton Chekhov

Although a little noisy at first, in a bizarre twist of fate, electronic music became popular in France in the 1890’s before fizzling out in favor of Swing music – which somehow made an early appearance in the 1900’s. In another alternative timeline, the Beatles never existed and England invented popcorn and hamburgers in the 1840’s. Damn, that’s what almost happened last time again, thought Scrooby tensely, while maneuvering himself onto a stronger looking branch. Details, everything was about the details. Sometimes there was almost too much detail to keep up with.

~ Christina Engela

When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive.

~ Neel Burton

As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ...This is our life and it's not going to last forever. There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.

~ Natalie Goldberg

There is a part of everything which is unexplored,because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at. Even the smallest thing has something in it which is unknown.

~ Guy De Maupassant

To successfully create illusion, the first thing you need is trust, but to perfect an illusion, the false reality most appear as authentic as the one it hides. Careful attention must be paid to every detail. The slightest of imperfections can, like a pin to a balloon, burst the illusion . . . and the truth behind the illusion becomes revealed.

~ Emily Thorne

The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes.

~ Ronald Reagan

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.

~ Alfred North Whitehead

The more power you use--the more detailed the observation of your specimen.The more power you have, the narrower your field of vision.Exactly, you say. The more power you have, my friends, the less you see of the whole.

~ Rosemary Nixon

A good story or a book is all about it's power to hold it's readers still till the very last word of it's climax - complexity in language, dialogues, descriptions, everything else is secondary!

~ Mehek Bassi

Writing is like painting. You sketch it, add colour, add depth and detail. You give it a final layer and then hang it proudly.

~ Kia Carrington-Russell

Look, the thing that's going to make Disneyland unique and different,' he insisted, 'is the detail. If we loose the detail, we loose it all.

~ Neal Gabler

God sovereignly controls every detail of your life, which should be a great comfort to you.

~ Jim George

It was not by gentle sweetness and self-abnegation that order was brought out of chaos; it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid attention to detail, by ceaseless labor, by the fixed determination of an indomitable will.

~ Lytton Strachey

The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.

~ Sara Sheridan

We lie to ourselves about the smallest details, and we lie to ourselves about our largest life choices.

~ Cortney S. Warren

After all, I was dressed in linen and so retained a certain capacity for nonchalance.

~ Joanna Ruocco

Watch every detail that affects the accuracy of your work.

~ Arthur C. Nielsen

The English light is so very subtle, so very soft and misty, that the architecture responded with great delicacy of detail.

~ Stephen Gardiner

All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

~ T. E. Lawrence

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.

~ Charles R. Swindoll

The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance.

~ Annie Dillard

In romance, we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner's foibles in intimate detail; in friendship, we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.

~ Mariella Frostrup

Exhortations to obstruct the operations of Government in detail, should; Exhortations to resist all.

~ James Mill

It's true that romance novels do detail the courtship phase of a relationship. We usually write 'And they lived happily ever after' before our heroine starts snoring or our hero starts tossing his socks over the hamper.

~ Teresa Medeiros

The success of a production depends on the attention paid to detail.

~ David O. Selznick