Theme Quotes - Page 24

• I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Long, Paper, Lines

  Hilaire Belloc (2015). “Delphi Works of Hilaire Belloc (Illustrated)”, p.795, Delphi Classics

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• Before seeing Truffaut 's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity a poetic comedy that's really funny.

  Pauline Kael

  Children, Simple, Small Changes

  Pauline Kael (1980). “When the lights go down”, Henry Holt & Co

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• If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough.

  Richard Ford

  Enough, Cases, Teach

  1986 The Sportswriter, ch.1.

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• I have come to use the pan-Celtic history, which spans from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard. The music I am creating is a result of traveling down that road and picking up all manner of themes and influences, which may or may not be overtly Celtic in nature.

  Loreena McKennitt

  Creating, Creative, Use

  Website notes to "The Mask And Mirror" on official site, loreenamckennitt.com.

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• The subject matter covered in Carmina stays pretty basic: love, lust, the pleasures of drinking and the heightened moods evoked by springtime. These primitive and persistently relevant themes are nicely camouflaged by the Latin and old German texts, so the listener can actually feign ignorance while listening to virtually X-rated lyrics. (Veni Veni Venias! Come, come come now!)The music itself toggles between huge forces and a single voice, juxtaposing majesty and intimacy with ease.

  Carl Orff

  Latin, Drinking, Ignorance

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• When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.

  Plato

  Men, Musician, Virtue

  Plato (1871). “The Dialogues of Plato”, p.87

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• [The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater".

  Doris Lessing

  Notebook, Men, Thinking

  Doris May Lessing (1989). “The Doris Lessing Reader”, Jonathan Cape

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• The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form -- to make it true and real to the theme, not to life.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Song, Art, Determination

  Sherwood Anderson (1947). “The Sherwood Anderson reader”

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• Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an origincal affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.

  Michel Foucault

  Philosophy, Errors, Order

  Michel Foucault (1990). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, Vintage

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• The 'enduring theme' [in fiction] of male competition and female competition for the hero/survivor has taken us from the fittest surviving to the brink of no one surviving. Sex roles have gone from functional to dysfunctional almost overnight. This is why the enduring theme must be questioned now.

  Warren Farrell

  Sex, Taken, Hero

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

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• Somehow, women's romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said "No". They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this "marry the rapist" theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women's most enduring romance novels.

  Warren Farrell

  Sweet, Men, Hands

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• This is love: You stop bothering about the universal, the general, get sucked instead into the local and particular: When will I see her again? What shall we do today? Do you like these shoes? Theory and reflection are delicate old uncles bustled out of the way by the boisterous nephews action and desire. Themes evaporate, only plot remains.

  Glen Duncan

  Love, Uncles, Reflection

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• I never work with one inspiration in mind. I like to take things from everywhere and piece it together. It's never a theme or a trick.

  Narciso Rodriguez

  Inspiration, Mind, Together

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• It was Sci-Fi and fantasy that got me reading, and Sci-Fi writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the fantasy and Sci-Fi genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting.

  Terry Pratchett

  Philosophy, Book, Reading

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Give me a theme," the little poet cried, "And I will do my part," "'Tis not a theme you need," the world replied; "You need a heart.

  Richard Watson Gilder

  Heart, Giving, Needs

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• A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Writing, People, Half

  The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski (2005). “The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future”, p.28, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• I have been moving around all my life. Going to different schools, living in different houses, shedding old roles, assuming new ones. This way of life is as natural to me as staying in one place is for other people. I do variations on the theme. I return to places where I used to be. I find my old personas. I try them on. If they still fit, I wear them out to a party or a show. If they begin to restrict my movements, I take them off. I am a human being, capable of mimicking anything I see or remember or can imagine.

  Ellen Gilchrist

  Moving, Party, School

  Ellen Gilchrist (2013). “Falling Through Space”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• It is what makes conscious of the conditions and laws of observing which applied in this manner become a theme on its own. The activity of consciousness depending on the way the work itself proceeds, becomes the subject of my attention this way and it is precisely because of this voyeuristic attitude toward the own observation and experience of the subject that the conscious analytic dimension in the work shows.

  Antoni Tapies

  Attitude, Law, Attention

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 30), 2004.

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• I worked a great deal then, as you can only do on a set theme, absolved from the obligation to find a new fact, a new subject every day.

  Rico Lebrun

  Facts, Obligation, Deals

  University of Southern California, Rico Lebrun (1961). “Rico Lebrun: Paintings and Drawings 1946-1961”

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• I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes.

  Nelson Shanks

  Thinking, Order, Musical

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• Love is the key-note of the universe-- The theme, the melody.

  Henry Abbey

  Love, Keys, Notes

  Henry Abbey (1879). “Poems”

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• I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kindness, Effort, Plot

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• Composition in photography is almost as varied as composition in music or words -- melodic or atonal, safe or daring -- and can enhance subject, theme, and style. Every photograph you take involves you in some compositional decision, even if this is simply where to set up the camera or when to press the button.

  Michael Langford

  Photography, Decision, Style

  Michael Langford (2000). “Basic Photography”, p.7, Taylor & Francis

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• Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the "country" mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Country, Army, Mind

  Bernard Bailyn (2017). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition”, p.36, Harvard University Press

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• Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

  Alan Arkin

  Trying, Acting, Together

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