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This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.

E. M. Forster

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E. M. Forster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1970
Died: June 7
Biographer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Edward Morgan Forster
E Forster
EM Forster
Great
Plot
Surprise
Importance
Elements
Mystery
Called
Detective
Rather
Detectives
Sometimes
Element

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.
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They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.
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At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
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She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.
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Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce boum.
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Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
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The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
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The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
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He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought Am I led am I leading? Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
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Are not beauty and delicacy the same?
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The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on but we are perfide Albion, the island of hypocrites, the people who have built up an Empire with a Bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets. Is the charge true? I think it is.
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England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.
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Ideas are fatal to caste.
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It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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Man can learn everything if he will but try.
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When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
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I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
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The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word-masses roughly describing himself (roughly: niceties shallcome later), gives them names and sex, assigns them plausible gestures, and causes them to speak by the use of inverted commas, and perhaps to behave consistently.
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