Abram Quotes

• Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.

  David Abram

  Thinking, Animal, Body

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• O father Abram, what these Christians are, Whose own hard dealing teaches them suspect The thoughts of others!

  William Shakespeare

  Christian, Father, Distrust

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 1, sc. 3, l. [161]

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• There are so many unsung heroines and heroes at this broken moment in our collective story, so many courageous persons who, unbeknownst to themselves, are holding together the world by their resolute love or contagious joy. Although I do not know your names, I can feel you out there.

  David Abram

  Hero, Names, Broken

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• Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next.

  David Abram

  Offering, Breathing, Drawing

  David Abram (2010). “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology”, p.61, Vintage

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• We sleep, allowing gravity to hold us, allowing Earth - our larger body - to recalibrate our neurons, composting the keen encounters of our waking hours , stirring them back, as dreams, into the sleeping substance of our muscles.

  David Abram

  Dream, Sleep, Substance

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• Such reciprocity is the very structure of perception. We experience the sensuous world only by rendering ourselves vulnerable to that world. Sensory perception is this ongoing interweavement: the terrain enters into us only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be taken up within that terrain.

  David Abram

  Taken, Perception, Ongoing

  David Abram (2010). “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology”, p.58, Vintage

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• It was a though we’d been living for a year in a dense grove of old trees, a cluster of firs, each with its own rhythm and character, from whom our bodies had drawn not just shelter but perhaps even a kind of guidance as we grew into a family.

  David Abram

  Character, Years, Tree

  David Abram (2010). “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology”, p.35, Vintage

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• ...along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.

  David Abram

  Dream, Character, Animal

  David Abram (2012). “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World”, p.163, Vintage

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• Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

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  Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Leadership, Wisdom

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• Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Attributed in "Forbes", Volume 102, 1968.

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  I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Abraham Lincoln (1999). “The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations”, Gramercy

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• Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Motivational, Inspiring, Feet

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  We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Positive, Happiness

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• I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Motivational, Patience

  Abraham Lincoln (1999). “The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations”, Gramercy

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• The telling of stories, like singing and praying, would seem to be an almost ceremonial act, an ancient and necessary mode of speech that tends the earthly rootedness of human language. For narrated events always happen somewhere. And for an oral culture, that location is never merely incidental to those occurrences. The events belong, as it were, to the place, and to tell the story of those events is to let the place itself speak through the telling.

  David Abram

  Singing, Events, Culture

  David Abram (2012). “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World”, p.163, Vintage

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• Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient association with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air.

  David Abram

  Air, Wind, Voice

  David Abram (1996). “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World”, Pantheon

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• Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting with their loud colors or whispering with their seeds; rocks snag lichen spores from the air and shelter spiders under their flanks; clouds converse with the fathomless blue and metamorphose into one another; they spill rain upon the land, which gathers in rivulets and carves out canyons.

  David Abram

  Rain, Blue, Color

  "Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmolog". Book by David Abram, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2010.

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• When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.

  Jonathan Nolan

  Play, Ideas, Long

  Source: collider.com

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• Quality. That's the first word, the one word that comes to mind when I think of the books published by Abrams. In a world where so many companies are willing to cut corners, to do things the easy way in order to enhance the bottom line, it's gratifying to know that there's one company that obviously takes such pride in its finished product, one company that can always be counted on to design and produce a book that is, itself, as much a work of art as the illustrations on its pages.

  Stan Lee

  Art, Book, Pride

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• When I first learned about Abrams and saw the types of books they were making, I knew I wanted my books to be published by them. Abrams books are special-when you hold one in your hands, you have the feeling that this book needed to be made. I once heard an artist say that books are fetish objects-I think Abrams gets that, because their books demand to be treasured. So who better to give comics art its proper due? I feel privileged to have found a home with Abrams.

  Jeff Kinney

  Art, Book, Home

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• Anything really well-made has the effect of making you want to do what you do-better. Abrams has always made very beautiful books. It's exciting to see this same excellence applied to the presentation of comics. Abrams ComicArts shows comics are stepping out of vaudeville and into Carnegie Hall-but the Marx Brothers will always be welcome!

  Jon J Muth

  Beautiful, Brother, Book

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• I work with people like Spielberg and Abrams all the time.

  Gabriel Basso

  People

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• I was, throughout school, in the theater program. Through elementary school, junior high, high school, and then J.J. Abrams, my closest friend in the world, we were living together. He was writing, and I was trying writing; I wasnt getting paid for it like he was, but I always had the acting bug.

  Greg Grunberg

  School, Writing, Trying

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. February 27, 2007.

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• I'm afraid the workings of J.J. Abrams' mind falls outside the predictive capacity of any coherent theory.

  Antony Garrett Lisi

  Fall, Mind, Capacity

  "Surfer-Physicist's Unified Theory Leads to Fame, Backlash". Interview with Kim Zetter, www.wired.com. February 27, 2008.

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