{"id":13498,"date":"2016-01-26T14:05:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T18:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=13498"},"modified":"2022-12-23T04:07:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T08:07:31","slug":"quotes-on-how-to-write-a-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/how-to-write-creative-content\/how-to-write-a-metaphor\/quotes-on-how-to-write-a-metaphor\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on how to write a metaphor"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers & others say<\/h2>\n

\"Quotes

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“The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Aristotle in the Poetics<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cFor centuries, metaphor was just the place where poets went to show off.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“In the business world, 800-pound gorillas run with the big dogs, swim with the sharks and occasionally find themselves up to their asses in alligators. And if they are not crazy like a fox, they can get caught like a deer in the headlights.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Richard Conniff, author, The Ape in the Corner Office<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Robert Frost, American poet<\/h6>\n
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\u201cUnless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u00a0\u2014 Robert Frost, American poet<\/h6>\n
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“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and statesman<\/h6>\n
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“Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate, learn, discover and invent. But metaphor is a way of thought before it is a way with words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 James Geary, author, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Metaphor shakes things up, giving us everything from Shakespeare to scientific discovery in the process. The mind is a plastic snow dome, the most beautiful, most interesting, and most itself, when, as Elvis put it, it’s all shook up. And metaphor keeps the mind shaking, rattling and rolling, long after Elvis has left the building.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 James Geary, author, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cA metaphor is a kind of magical changing room \u2014 where, one thing, for a moment, becomes another, and in that moment is seen in a whole new way. As soon as something old is seen in a new way, it stimulates a torrent of new thoughts and associations, almost as if a mental floodgate has been lifted.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mardy Grothe, author of I Never Metaphor I Didn\u2019t Like<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Cram three similes into a single paragraph and you become a parody. Write page after page of featureless prose and you become a drudge. So work your way through a rough draft eliminating and adding color. A figure of speech every third of fourth paragraph is usually about right.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, editor at large, The Oregonian,<\/em> in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“In A Moveable Feast<\/em> Hemingway recalls the days when he and Fitzgerald careered through the Spanish countryside in an open car, playing the metaphor game. One would point to an object as it came into view. The other would generate a figure of speech involving it. If he succeeded immediately, the other took his turn. If he failed, he took a drink from a jug of wine and tried again.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, editor at large, The Oregonian,<\/em> in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Metaphor was the clay the great physicists used to mold new theories of the universe. Einstein first talked of trains and clocks, then expanded the images to weave time and space into a single fabric.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, editor at large, The Oregonian,<\/em> in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Explanations require lots of attention, but attention is scarce. So don’t explain. Instead, anchor in what people already know.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Anchoring is easier than explaining from scratch. Wikipedia says an alpaca is ‘a domesticated species of the South American camelid.’ That’s the explanation. Or, you could say an alpaca is like a small llama. Which one is easier to understand?”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“My all time favorite similes, by the way, come from the hardboiled-detective fiction of the forties and fifties, and the literary descendants of the dime-dreadful writers. These favorites include ‘It was darker than a carload of assholes’ (George V. Higgins) and ‘I lit a cigarette [that] tasted like a plumber\u2019s handkerchief’ (Raymond Chandler).”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Whether long or short, the careful analogy is a gift to the reader because it brings depth and clarity to our writing.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Paula LaRocque, author of Championship Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Too much of any of these devices makes for ridiculous reading \u2014 and the line is thin between too much and just enough. Here\u2019s one good guideline: If readers start noticing cause more than consequence, it\u2019s probably too much.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Paula LaRocque, newspaper writing coach, in Championship Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I never met-a-phor I didn\u2019t like.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Richard Lederer, best-selling author of The Word Circus<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bernard Malamud, American author of The Natural<\/em> and other novels<\/h6>\n
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\u201cMetaphors are necessary and not just nice.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Andrew Ortony, Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University<\/h6>\n
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\u201cA newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically dead has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 George Orwell, novelist and political thinker, in “Politics and the English Language”<\/h6>\n
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\u201cWorn-out metaphors \u2026 have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 George Orwell, novelist and political thinker, in “Politics and the English Language”<\/h6>\n
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“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.”<\/h5>\n
\u00a0\u2014 Daniel Pink, author, A Whole New Mind<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Thunderous dunks<\/em> and lightning-quick running backs<\/em> offend the serious reader in two ways: 1) They are clich\u00e9s; and 2) They are questionable, even as hyperbole. Unless we can create a fresh image or make a strong case for hyperbole, we should equate forces of nature with acts of humanity.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Steve Wilson, sports writer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cAll things are metaphors.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and statesman<\/h6>\n
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