Theme Quotes - Page 23

• The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

  Elvis Costello

  Attractive, Exile

  "Elvis Costello: The ESQ&A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. December 17, 2013.

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• Room 10 [a short film she codirected with Andrea Buchanan] nailed my personal theme: love and choosing to stay in the room when the going gets tough.

  Jennifer Aniston

  Rooms, Tough, Film

  Interview with Kristin Hahn, www.elle.com. August 4, 2009.

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• No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody's pain and wrong.

  Henry James

  Hurt, Pain, Confusion

  Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.318, University of Chicago Press

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• All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will.

  Antoni Tapies

  Artist, Ideas, Chinese

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• Reminding people what in reality it is all about, giving them a theme on which to ponder, creating a shock within them, pulling them out of the delusion of non authenticity, enabling them to become aware of their true possibilities.

  Antoni Tapies

  Reality, Creating, People

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 25), 2004.

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• If I couldn't be a fiction writer, I would be a roller coaster designer for theme parks

  Mike Wells

  Would Be, Fiction, Parks

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• Angels and Airwaves is a complete, pure reflection of who I am. The philosophy, the spiritualism, the esotericism, the idea of hope and space and the themes about life and grandeur that's all me.

  Tom DeLonge

  Philosophy, Angel, Reflection

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• Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Messages, Fuzzy, Kind

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Struggle, Men, Darkness

  "Nikos Kazantzakis" by Helen Kazantzakis, (p. 507), 1968.

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• Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, I'm not afraid to deal with themes about the ups and downs of life, yet which are still entertaining, and you still feel these stories.

  Harvey Weinstein

  Stories, Not Afraid, Deals

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• Loneliness is the theme, and I play it like a symphony, in endless variations.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Loneliness, Play, Symphony

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• I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.

  Regina Brett

  Book, Giving, Overcoming

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• Art is the retelling of certain themes in a new light, making them accessible to the public of the moment.

  George Lucas

  Art, Light, Moments

  1988 In the NewYork Times, 9 Jun.

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• The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.

  Steven Pinker

  Psychological Disorders, Brain, Genius

  "On Einstein's brain". The New York Times, June 24, 1999.

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• It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.

  Kingsley Amis

  Women, Fiction, Extraterrestrial

  Kingsley Amis (2011). “The King's English”, p.299, Penguin UK

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• What is noble, lyrical, tender in the upper level shown is also with the servants, scoundrels, and scamps, as in a distorting mirror. This contrast seems to me a most appealing musical theme--to show love in its noble and crude forms, romanticism and crass realism mixed as in everyday life.

  Stefan Zweig

  Mirrors, Musical, Everyday

  Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig (1977). “A Confidential Matter: The Letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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• Critical (i.e., separating) methods apply only to the world-as-nature. It would be easier to break up a theme of Beethoven with dissecting knife or acid than to break up the soul by methods of abstract thought . Nature-knowledge and man-knowledge have neither ways nor aims in common.

  Oswald Spengler

  Men, Knives, Soul

  Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (1932). “The Decline of the West”

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• I love the supporting characters because you get to do more, to be totally honest. It's been sort of a theme with me. In Son of No One, I think I might have seven lines in the entire movie because everything is happening to my character.

  Channing Tatum

  Character, Son, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

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• I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

  Abi Morgan

  Thinking, Ideas, Theatre

  Source: collider.com

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• We can ask for a dream of guidance on any issue that is facing us, and when we're lucky the dream can take us out of the boxes of the everyday mind's approach to that theme.

  Robert Moss

  Dream, Issues, Everyday

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• As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them.

  Cory Trepanier

  Years, Tree, Looks

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• There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?

  Willa Cather

  Attitude, Numbers, Mind

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.45, U of Nebraska Press

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• One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Hate, War

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• I love that as a theme for women: Stop standing by! You've got to make stuff happen! You've got to create your own world because if you let other people do it, they're going to just screw you.

  Melissa Rosenberg

  People, Stuff Happens, World

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• Few, as I have said, are the humorists who can induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to give us the joy of being worn down and tired out with laughter, is a success to be won by no man save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things.

  Max Beerbohm

  Laughter, Tired, Recovery

  Max Beerbohm (2006). “And Even Now”, p.184, 1st World Publishing

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