Symbols Quotes - Page 19

• I love being regarded as a sex symbol, but I can't take it too seriously.

  John Travolta

  Sex, Sex Symbol, I Can

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks. Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise.

  Kathleen Turner

  Sex, Attitude, Character

  The Observer, London, December 28, 1986.

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• In terms of men I fancy, I think the actor James Franco is gorgeous. But I find it odd to be described as a sex symbol myself.

  Emma Watson

  Sex, Men, Thinking

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• When we talk about Oscars, it's almost as a symbol of excellence, and the American public and the worldwide public accept that symbol.

  Harvey Weinstein

  Excellence, Oscars, Accepting

  "Harvey Weinstein On Hollywood's Heated Oscar Race". Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.wbaa.org. December 2, 2011.

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• When we talk about Oscars, it's almost as a symbol of excellence, and the American public and the worldwide public accept that symbol. So, a movie like 'The Artist' that costs $14 million, has to go out and compete with movies that cost $140 million. How does David deal with Goliath?

  Harvey Weinstein

  Artist, Excellence, Doe

  "Harvey Weinstein On Hollywood's Heated Oscar Race". Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.wbaa.org. December 2, 2011.

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• The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace... a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and, through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.

  Minoru Yamasaki

  Peace, Artist, Greatness

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• I don't consider myself a sex symbol.

  Pia Zadora

  Sex, Sex Symbol

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• Big sporting events and spectacles might give the national morale a shot in the arm, but they are too transient and taste-specific to stand as robust symbols of nationhood.

  Julian Baggini

  Giving, Events, Arms

  "Why the white cliffs of Dover are so special" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2012.

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• Of all the foods we share, there is nothing more primordial than meat. It's no surprise that meat-eaters still want a partner who will give, receive and share this primordial symbol of a budding partnership.

  Helen Fisher

  Giving, Meat, Want

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• All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Peril, Beneath The Surface

  Oscar Wilde (2010). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.4, Bibliolis Books

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• I didn't have a chance to buy you anything," she said, then held both closed hands toward him. Uncurled her fingers. In each cupped palm a brown egg. He took them. They were cold. He thought it a tender, wonderful thing to do. She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift. To him. It didn't matter that he'd bought them himself at the supermarket the day before. He imagined she understood him, that she had to love him to know that it was the outstreched hands, the giving, that mattered.

  Annie Proulx

  Hands, Eggs, Giving

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

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• A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

  Ian Mcewan

  Mean, Feelings, Mind

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Atonement”, p.37, Random House

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• She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Beautiful, Blow, Paris

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.21, Random House

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• It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Reflection, Desire, Example

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• There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Teacher, School, Squares

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• A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Book, Eye, Eight

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.133, Seven Stories Press

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• I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.

  Julio Cortazar

  Night, Mind, Compass

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.53, Everyman's Library

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• Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Book, Mean

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• The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.

  Frank Herbert

  Children, Father, Believe

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.390, Penguin

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• Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.

  Hakim Bey

  Change, Art, Truth

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.39, Autonomedia

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• Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

  Gene Wolfe

  Real, Believe, Mind

  "The Shadow of the Torturer". Book by Gene Wolfe, 1980.

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• In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Writing, Mean

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• ...What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature." It has become a symbol now.... That is the way human beings deal with the world.

  Lian Hearn

  Mean, Animal, Blessing

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• It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Character, Trying, Events

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Slow Learner”, p.9, Penguin

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• A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

  Clifford Geertz

  Motivation, Powerful, Men

  Clifford Geertz (2017). “The Interpretation of Cultures”, p.98, Hachette UK

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