28 Quotes by Howard Mittelmark

"For mysterious reasons, many authors consider it useful to provide a story about a forty-year-old man-about-town with a prologue drawn from his life as a five-year-old boy. ... There's only one letter's difference between "yarn" and "yawn," and it is often a long letter, filled with childhood memories."

"...This particular blunder is known as deus ex machina, which is French for "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"...This type of ending is a special instance of deus ex machina, known as the folie adieu, which is French for "Are you FUCKING kidding me?"

"Remember: if there is gum on the mantelpiece in the first chapter, it must go on something by the last chapter."

"Do not think us as traffic cops, or even driving instructors. Think of us instead as your onboard navigation system, available day or night, a friendly voice to turn to whenever you look up, lost and afraid, and think "How the fuck did I end up here?"

"He vacated a myriad times in the naively prolonged girl."

"If John somehow turns into a different man and we do not witness that transformation, the editor considering your novel will somehow turn into an editor considering a different novel."

"We do not propose any rules; we offer observations. “No right on red” is a rule. “Driving at high speed toward a brick wall usually ends badly” is an observation."

"Alice in Lapland. Any undue interest in or physical contact with children will set off alarms. If you do not want your reader to think he is reading about a pedophile, dandling of children on knees should be kept to a minimum by fathers, and even more so by uncles. If your character is in any way associated with organized religion, whether he is a bishop, a minister, or the kindly old church caretaker with a twinkle in his eye, he should not even pull a child from a burning building."

"How she wished she were back at home with her family, strumming her banjo on the porch while Grampa Cornpone played the fiddle. Oh, the steamy bayou nights of her youth! Ma would cook up a huge pan of Creole innards, whilst Pa sat in the corner smoking his pipe of tabaccy with the hound dogs snoozing at his feet."