Thursday, June 23, 2011

Quotes that inspire me to write

  Since I started writing, I have kept a small book of quotes. They range from my hero in history to characters in my favorite book. There are some quotes that have always stuck with me. These quotes are mostly from musicals. I love musicals.
      Since I have so many favorite quotes, I will pick my top three favorite quotes of all time that have inspired me to write. My first one is from the musical West Side Story, my favorite character Maria says this at the end of the movie: "You killed him, the same way you killed my brother. Not with knives or guns! But with hate!" I remember when I saw that musical in middle school. For some reason, that quote has always stuck with me. I used this quote to write something in creative writing my senior year in high school. I used it as a flashback for Maria at Chino's murder trial. In the movie, Chino killed Maria's boyfriend. This musical reminds me of Romeo and Juliet.
       The second one is from another musical called South Pacific, in this movie a Frenchman named Emile falls in love with an american navy nurse during WWII. When race becomes a problem because his two kids are half Japanese, Emile tells a soldier named Joseph Cable who is in a similar situation the most amazing thing I have ever heard in a musical.  He says, "Yes, so, if all you care about is here, yes it is a good place to be. But, if all you care about is taken away from from you, there is no place." Luckily, Emile gets the happy ending. This inspired me to write this scene from Joseph Cable's point of view. While I am watching the movie, I am always wondering what he is thinking when Emile tells him that.
       My final quote is actually from a book. The book and movie Gone with the Wind  is a very good story about the South during the Civil War. To be honest, I think we do not hear their side of the story in history. One of my favorite characters is Ashley Wilkes. Ashley is a man who has a ton of honor and has a sense of duty. His sense of duty explains why he went to fight. He would not have done so otherwise.  He actually say this to a group at the beginning of the story, "Most of the miseries of the world are caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about."  The first time I heard him say that, I was surprised. I assumed that all Confederates wanted to fight. That is how most movies make it look like. Anyway, this quote has inspired the mindset of some of my characters. Most of my stories have an antiwar theme to it. I enjoy writing about that because I am a peaceful person. I hate the idea of  violence.

       Quotes from books, plays, movies, etc., have had an influence on me in something that I have written at some point.

No comments:

Post a Comment