Anecdotes Quotes - Page 3

• A famous anecdote concerning Cuvier involves the tale of his visitation from the devil—only it was not the devil but one of his students dressed up with horns on his head and shoes shaped like cloven hooves. This frightening apparition burst into Cuvier's bedroom when he was fast asleep and claimed:
  'Wake up thou man of catastrophes. I am the Devil. I have come to devour you!'
  Cuvier studied the apparition carefully and critically said,
  'I doubt whether you can. You have horns and hooves. You eat only plants.

  Georges Cuvier

  Men, Shoes, Doubt

  12 Copy quote

• A remarkable memoir that's packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness.

  Steve Martin

  Self, Advice, Levels

  4 Copy quote

• I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.

  Jan Koum

  Kids, Communist Leaders, Trouble

  "WhatsApp: The inside story". Interview with David Rowan, www.wired.co.uk. February 19, 2014.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Art, Mean, Interesting

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.222, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

  Margaret Halsey

  Oxford, Mind, Visitors

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I take pens and I write on the inside of my arm. When I'm with people and somebody says a really fascinating anecdote, or fact, or phrase, I'll write it on the inside of my arm. At the end of the day, I'll take the very best things that are on my arm and I'll copy them into a notebook that I always carry and only when the weather is absolutely terrible will I really key the very best of that notebook into the computer. At that point, it's all sort of censored twice - only the best things go from the arm to the book and only the best things go from the book to the computer.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Notebook, Writing, Weather

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the fingermarks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural.

  David Friedrich Strauss

  Character, Historical, Ignorant

  David Friedrich Strauss, George Eliot (1860). “The life of Jesus critically examined”, p.339

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.

  Irving Howe

  Writing, Suggestions, Sometimes

  4 Copy quote

• How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside and forgotten.

  Washington Irving

  Character, Past, Thinking

  Washington Irving (2012). “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories”, p.70, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the key anecdote in the book is when Colin [Powell] and I were discussing Iraq. Colin was upstairs in the Treaty Room, in the residence. And he talks about his concerns about the use of military in Iraq. And I said I felt the same concerns, but it might be that we have to use it. In which case, he said, "I support you."

  George W. Bush

  Military, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.aarp.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sports biography at its best. Rich in period detail, anecdote, and fresh perspective, Strong Boy paints both the good and the bad sides of success, as America's growing celebrity culture turned a simple Irish American gladiator into a national, in fact international hero. A very human story with profound parallels for our sports-obsessed culture today!

  Nigel Hamilton

  Sports, Strong, Hero

  4 Copy quote

• Despite his [Artie Shaw's] affectations of reclusiveness, he never tired of talking about himself, as countless long interviews reveal. I do not recall an anecdote he ever told me that was not in some way intended to convey a sense of his own superiority to everyone. . One wonders how a person of his character could produce such beauty.

  Gene Lees

  Tired, Character, Talking

  4 Copy quote

• Bill Pearson is definitely a man to talk to, especially in the afternoon when he's had a couple of drinks because he's got so many stories and anecdotes.

  Duncan Jones

  Couple, Men, Stories

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Freedom, Knowledge, Men

  5 Copy quote

• There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  History, Attention, Despotism

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There comes a point where certain things are becoming my Achilles heel; you know when you start repeating yourself and saying the same anecdotes over and over again you start slowly hating yourself.

  Karen Elson

  Hate, Becoming, Achilles

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition. 'I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,' said Brillat-Savarin, beginning an anecdote. 'What!' interrupted Rochebriant; 'eating dinner in a drawing-room?' 'I must beg you to observe, monsieur,' explained the great gastronome, 'that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before.'

  Ambrose Bierce

  Food, Drawing, Cooking

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2387, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most intriguing things in management and in business is the role of storytelling - people need the anecdotes to do the work that they do.

  Anita Roddick

  People, Needs, Roles

  4 Copy quote

• I don't want names, but you have to have bumped into some pretty nasty artists with pretty big chips on their shoulders. I'd like an anecdote about the most obnoxious personality you had the misfortune of working with, albeit as anonymously as you feel comfortable divulging.

  Patrick Stump

  Artist, Names, Personality

  "The Idolator Interview: Butch Walker And Patrick Stump". www.idolator.com. December 16, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In one of my favorite anecdotes about Foucault, someone asks him why he writes books. He responds by saying something like "When I begin to write a book, I do not know how it will come out, what it will say in the end. If I already did, I wouldn't need to write it."

  Thomas L. Dumm

  Book, Writing, Needs

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it's OK if you only make one point, as long as it's a good one.

  Ben Clymer

  Writing, Long, Storytelling

  7 Copy quote

• I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

  John Thorn

  Form

  Source: bleacherreport.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My favorite part of any baseball book - and I read a lot of them - is the anecdotes. I believe there is a story within every boxscore and for me - the more outrageous the better!

  Jonathan Weeks

  Baseball, Book, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• The plural on anecdote is not evidence

  Michael Mauboussin

  Evidence

  6 Copy quote

• I don't do commentaries on films because A) I'm not very good at it and B) it's an odd thing that I discovered, on my first film, that you go through this really intense experience of making a film and then you sit in a little room with a monitor and you reduce the thing to a bunch of silly anecdotes. It's really unfulfilling and I've never really enjoyed listening to them anyway, so I just don't do them.

  David Slade

  Silly, Listening, Rooms

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source