Subject Matter Quotes - Page 10

• Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.

  Annie Dillard

  Art, People, Choices

  Annie Dillard (1983). “Living by Fiction”, New York : Harper & Row

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• I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Law, Keys

  Steven Pinker (2007). “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”, p.282, Penguin

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• There's so much more freedom in film as far as subject matter and what can be said. And then, also, the process is different because there's more time. On movies there's just so much freedom and space to explore in front of the camera.

  Dave Franco

  Space, Cameras, Different

  Source: www.ew.com

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• I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.

  Milton Avery

  Independent, Unique, Impact

  Milton Avery, Ruth Fine, M. Knoedler & Co (2007). “Magical means: Milton Avery and watercolor”

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• The strength of film is its accessibility and immediacy. But the strength of books is that freedom to really depict anything you want because people are going to be reading it in private. So, I'm always trying to write with the immediacy and the constant motion of film but I'm also trying to write with the complete freedom of subject matter that books have.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again.

  Chester Brown

  Mom, Reading, Fiction

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• I'm just naturally gravitating towards different things. As you mature, different subject matters. And as you're older, you can't play as many parts, or you shouldn't be playing the parts that you used to play. But also there's the opportunity to play parts that you couldn't have.

  Clint Eastwood

  Opportunity, Play, Different

  "Letters From Iwo Jima - Clint Eastwood interview". Interview with Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• The peculiarity of all death-based religions is that their subject-matter is entirely outside of facts. Men could think and think, talk and argue, advance, deny, assert, and controversy, and write innumerable books, without being hampered at any time by any fact.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Book, Writing, Men

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• It's an eclectic film and I think we served the novel really well. And we had a great cast who worked for free. Everyone read it and said, I'm in, from Nick [Nolte] to Albert [Finney] to Omar [Epps] to Barbara [Hershey]. We really had fun and shot it in a very short time. I think the subject matter is more topical today, more to the point, than it was 30 years ago, when it concerned the Vietnam War.

  Bruce Willis

  Fun, War, Thinking

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• The seriousness or otherwise of the subject matter is often irrelevent to the question of whether a book is any good. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote a great and beautiful novel which mainly involved shallow people going to parties in a rich guy's house. By contrast, all sorts of terrible books are published every month about men slaughtering people for no reason - a serious matter which, in itself, does not make the author worthy of serious consideration.

  Declan Lynch

  Beautiful, Book, Party

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• If you want to get an interesting perspective do not think of Hugh as a traditional 20th century physicist but more of a Renaissance man with interests and skills in many different areas. He was smart and lots of things interested him and he brought the same general conceptual methodology to solve them. The subject matter was not so important as the solution ideas.

  Hugh Everett III

  Smart, Men, Thinking

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• My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

  Harrison Birtwistle

  Ideas, Musical, Opera

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• Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.

  Jeffery Deaver

  Block, Book, Writing

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• The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same.

  Sherman Alexie

  Kids, Simple, Emotional

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• When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.

  Tea Obreht

  Block, Writing, Brain

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• In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch.

  Douglas Wilder

  Stress, Class, Names

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter.

  Haile Gerima

  Editing, Matter, Documentary Films

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• For me, if the writing and - by extension - the subject matter and the characters are all good, it doesn't matter if it's film or TV. Each medium has great things going for it.

  Adam Croasdell

  Writing, Character, Going For It

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• It's hard to look at anything with an objective eye. I think people bring themselves into the equation when they watch a movie. They bring their own prejudices, their own biases, their own feelings toward the subject matter, the characters.

  James Ponsoldt

  Eye, Character, Thinking

  "James Ponsoldt on David Foster Wallace and the objections to The End Of The Tour". Interview with Pete Croatto, www.avclub.com. August 5, 2015.

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• I love directing, It means so much to me to direct stories about subject matter that I care deeply about. I can act in many things, and you can try to experience different characters, but to direct is years of your life and you have to really love it and believe in it.

  Angelina Jolie

  Love, Life, Believe

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• This time, there have been a lot of interesting discussions about the subject matter, and I've had a good time talking about it. And in some of the cases, I'm not just signing books - I'm showing slides and talking about the work

  Leonard Nimoy

  Book, Inspiration, Talking

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• In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.

  Roger Scruton

  Party, Views, Imagination

  Roger Scruton (2015). “Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation”, p.139, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.

  Jane Rule

  Choices, Novelists, Plot

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

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• Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.

  Virgil Thomson

  Writing, Style, Matter

  Virgil Thomson (1984). “A Virgil Thomson reader”, Plume

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• Far too often scripts are being written with race in mind, but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to any conversation on race. I applaud Jesse [Zwick] for having the courage to say, this [About Alex] just a story about friends, and they could be anyone. There's no specific color that forces a relationship to be discussed in any other manner.

  Nate Parker

  Race, Color, Mind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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