Patterns Quotes - Page 12

• And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprintit’s no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, to be a willful excursion into mythomania

  Philip Roth

  Reality, Kitchen, Tables

  Philip Roth (1997). “American Pastoral”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.

  Aldous Huxley

  Distance, Eye, Order

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me: but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

  William Shakespeare

  Light, Heat, Should

  'Othello' (1602-4) act 5, sc. 2, l. 1

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• I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.

  Jonathan Ames

  Moving, Destiny, Giving

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• Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.

  Vera Nazarian

  Moving, Winter, Glasses

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• a perception of the cosmic unity of this higher level. And a feeling of timelessness, the feeling that what we know as time is only the result of a naive faith in causality - the notion that A in the past caused B in the present, which will cause C in the future, when actually A, B, and C are all part of a pattern that can be truly understood only by opening the doors of perception and experiencing it... in this moment... this supreme moment... this Kairos.

  Tom Wolfe

  Past, Doors, Feelings

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.163, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.

  Tara Brach

  Years, Voice, People

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• Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Pain, Memories

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• Uh-uh. We've played this game before. I hide. You never seek. I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm beginning to sense a pattern.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Games, Clay, Bits

  "Bitten (Women of the Otherworld, Book 1)". Book by Kelley Armstrong, October 1, 2001.

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• All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.

  Iain Banks

  Strong, Stupid, People

  Iain Banks (1984). “The wasp factory: a novel”, Scribner

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• Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.

  Jay-Z

  Powerful, Creativity, Artist

  Jay-Z (2010). “Decoded (Enhanced Edition)”, p.221, Random House Group

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• I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

  Mary Balogh

  Believe, Fate, Giving

  Mary Balogh (2006). “Simply Love”, p.237, Delacorte Press

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• The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail.

  Louis L'Amour

  Morning, Horse, Jobs

  Louis L'Amour (2004). “The Proving Trail”, p.167, Bantam

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• If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Numbers, Squares

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• There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.

  Edward de Bono

  Creativity, Imagination, Creative

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• I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Loss, Dark, Years

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.254, Macmillan

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• No marriage stays in the same pattern forever. It is both the best feature of marriage and the worst, that it inevitably changes.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Forever, Worst, Features

  Lisa Kleypas (2010). “Love in the Afternoon”, p.305, St. Martin's Press

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• She draws patterns on my face / These lines make shapes that can’t replace / the version of me that I hold inside / when lying with you, lying with you, lying with you.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Lying, Shapes, Lines

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.119, Scholastic Inc.

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• The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.

  Steven Johnson

  Art, Mistake, Writing

  Steven Johnson (2010). “Where Good Ideas Come From”, p.156, Penguin

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• Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.

  Vandana Shiva

  Needs, Violence, Consumption

  Vandana Shiva (2016). “Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace”, p.102, Zed Books Ltd.

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• There is a proper way to greet the sentinels in Ceris, certain patterns and forms that you must observe when presented to Queen Islanzadí, and a hundred different manners in which to greet those around you, if it’s not better to just remain quiet.” “With all your customs,” Eragon risked saying, “it seems as though you’ve only made it easier to offend people.” A smile flickered across her lips. “Perhaps.

  Christopher Paolini

  Queens, People, Different

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.799, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Taken, Party, Cutting

  "Trumpery" by Hendrik Hertzberg, prod02.newyorker.com. May 2, 2011.

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• People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

  Terry Pratchett

  Sky, People, Bird

  FaceBook post by Terry Pratchett from Nov 30, 2016

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• And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.

  Ralph Ellison

  Sight, Mind, Chaos

  Ralph Ellison (1952). “Invisible Man”

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• But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

  Alan Lightman

  Past, Laughing, Kaleidoscope

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.102, Vintage

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