Enigmatic Quotes - Page 2

• Content to me is very important, but I like it when [the photograph] is also enigmatic. If you don't know what it is you begin to speculate, and that is what I want.

  John Gutmann

  Important, Want, Photograph

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• I don't consider myself enigmatic, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.

  Phil Knight

  Thinking, Persona

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• The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they're not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing is wrong too. Then smudging can help make the painting invincible, surreal, more enigmatic - that's how easy it is.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Technique, Details

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jul 14, 2015

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• Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Jesus, Art, People

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• Inexperienced players have a fear of this piece, which seems to them enigmatic, mysterious, and astonishing in its power. We must admit that it has remarkable characteristics which compel respect and occasionally surprise the most wary players.

  Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

  Player, Knights, Chess

  Eugene Znosko-Borovsky (2013). “The Art of Chess Combination”, p.44, Courier Corporation

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• A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms grows from a downy tip; A terrace nine stories high rises from level earth; A journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath one's feet.

  Laozi

  Journey, Men, Feet

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• It's very enigmatic because of course, the population [of North Korea] has no contact with the world outside or it's very, very limited. They don't have any telephone connections, no radio, no TV, no movies, no newspapers - nothing from the outside world. This is very strange and there's the very strict, unifying government that forces you to be in step. You see it in the stadium where the spectators create, by flipping cards, an image of the dear leader, or of the volcano, and it's made of a 100,000 human pictures.

  Werner Herzog

  Government, Volcanoes, Korea

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Art, Young Friends, Joy

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• Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Attitude, Thinking, Space

  W. N. P. Barbellion (1919). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”

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• It is the anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even "they" themselves.

  Joseph Heller

  Nobody Knows, Knows

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.603, Simon and Schuster

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• Eric Walrond, handsome, cosmopolitan, and beguilingly enigmatic, may have been the most promising literary talent of the Harlem Renaissance.... James Davis's finely written, beautifully paced Eric Walrond is a major biography of a fascinating figure.

  David Levering Lewis

  Eric, Renaissance, May

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• Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

  Ben Okri

  Reading, Creativity, Character

  Ben Okri (2014). “A Way of Being Free”, p.24, Head of Zeus

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• Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her.

  Elliot Perlman

  People, Perfect, Comfort

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• Stronach's fragile beauty belies an emotional strength, pragmatic resiliency, and intellectual courage. Her ideas and choreography are both enigmatic and playful.

  Tami Stronach

  Emotional, Ideas, Intellectual

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• Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving.

  Janette Turner Hospital

  Moving, Erotic, Historical

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• To look at her, you might not guess that inside she is laughing and crying, at her own stupidities and luckiness, and at the strange enigmatic ways of the world which she will spend lifetime trying to learn and understand.

  Sylvia Plath

  Women, Learning, Laughing

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• Kate Bernheimer's fiction offers a unique and delicate gift, the tempting mirage of a grace that constantly escapes. The Complete Tales of Merry Gold is an exceptional, lovely book, beautifully enigmatic, speaking a language that mysteriously evokes the unspoken.

  Lydia Millet

  Book, Unique, Grace

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• Good photographs aren't just complex. They are enigmatic. Images are beguiling. And the way they play into our psychology, into our visual cortex, is something we still don't understand.

  Stuart Franklin

  Psychology, Photograph

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Radio astronomy reflects our fascination with how audio can be used to understand information or ideas. Just as scientists visualize data through charts and pictures, we can use 'data sonification' to translate radio signals into sound that help us better understand some of our most enigmatic planetary systems.

  Honor Harger

  Data, Ideas, Fascination

  "Tuning In to the Universe" by Honor Harger, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 21, 2013.

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• Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit,it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.

  Jacques Maritain

  Creativity, Expression, Mystical Experiences

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• I have this theory, bands with enigmatic lyrics attract crazies.

  Michael Azerrad

  Band, Theory

  Interview with Jim Shearer, www.ifc.com.

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• Enigmatic - the quality of keeping silent and making people wonder if one is stupid rather than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt.

  Mary Jo Putney

  Stupid, People, Silence

  Mary Jo Putney (2002). “The Spiral Path”, Berkley

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• Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

  Nicolas Cage

  Answers, Levels, Opinion

  "Knowing - Nicolas Cage interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.

  Lev Grossman

  Queens, Sailing, Trying

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.353, Penguin

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• The resulting texts always took a narrative term, enigmatic at first but ultimately explicit and often premonitory. The semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance. Henceforth, every form of writing will consist of an operation of decoding, of contamination, and of sense perversion. All this because all language is essentially mystification, and everything is fiction.

  Brion Gysin

  Real, Writing, Firsts

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