Theme Quotes - Page 26

• It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.

  Margaret Atwood

  Children, Growth, Doe

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• I did not write it [Coming of Age in Samoa] as a popular book, but only with the hope that it would be intelligible to those who might make the best use of its theme, that adolescence need not be the time of stress and strain which Western society made it; that growing up could be freer and easier and less complicated; and also that there were prices to pay for the very lack of complication I found in Samoa - less intensity, less individuality, less involvement with life.

  Margaret Mead

  Growing Up, Stress, Book

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• A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

  Lillian Hellman

  Simple, Deception, Ignorant

  Lillian Hellman (1976). “Scoundrel time”

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• Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.

  Madame de Stael

  Meditation, Mind, Criticism

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• Enough of self, that darling luscious theme,
  O'er which philosophers in raptures dream;
  Of which with seeming disregard they write
  Then prizing most when most they seem to slight.

  Charles Churchill

  Dream, Writing, Self

  Charles Churchill (1822). “The Poems of Charles Churchill”, p.163

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• You don't believe in organized religion, yet a major theme in so many of your works seems to be a quest for God.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Believe, Religion, Quests

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• Many readers share their stories with me and if one speaks to me (or if the same theme keeps coming at me), I will research it and decide if it would make a good book. But, straight down to it, people inspire me.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Book, People, Inspire

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• The recurring theme of all religions is a sympathy, empathy, connection, capacity between the human and the divine - that we were made for union with one another. They might express this through different rituals, doctrines, dogmas, or beliefs, but at the higher levels they're talking about the same goal. And the goal is always union with the divine.

  Richard Rohr

  Talking, Goal, Empathy

  Source: ryanthomasneace.com

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• I don't necessarily look for dark themes; they just seem to appear.

  Clint Eastwood

  Dark, Looks, Seems

  "Gran Torino - Clint Eastwood interview". Interview with Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• If you see a theme that you might want to take a photo of, you sort of stand there for an hour waiting for it to resolve, waiting for the geometry of a theme to be exactly what you want them to be. That was my process to get photos.

  Teju Cole

  Waiting, Want, Might

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Some clergymen make a motto, instead of a theme, of their texts.

  Hosea Ballou

  Motto, Clergymen, Preaching

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• The relation of this God with this man; the relation of this man with this God--this is the only theme of the Bible and of philosophy.

  Karl Barth

  Philosophy, Men, Relation

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• the distinction between rich nations and poor nations is one of the great dominant political and international themes of our century.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Political, Poor Nations, Rich

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• My focus has always been on talent over looks. This theme of people putting an emphasis on looks first has been a constant reminder throughout my life that most people don’t see things in the same way that I do.

  Jennifer Hudson

  People, Focus, Way

  Jennifer Hudson (2012). “I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down”, p.25, Penguin

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• Reality is far more complex and messy than many of the grander themes and explanations would have us believe.

  Peter Dicken

  Believe, Reality, Messy

  Peter Dicken (2003). “Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century”, p.14, SAGE

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• Change and renewal are themes in life, arent they? We keep growing throughout life.

  Susan Minot

  Growing, Renewal

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• You don't choose your themes; they choose you. The meaning of your stories will rise out of your deepest longings, often out of longings so deep that you haven't admitted them even to yourself. Your convictions, your confusions, your most passionate dreams will be there whenever you begin a story, so you might as well learn to tap into them.

  Marion Dane Bauer

  Dream, Confusion, Stories

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• The trees change their voices in autumn as well as their shapes. No longer do they whisper to one another in muffled tones as they did in summer; they talk in a different leaf-language now. The wind moves through the boughs like fingers drawn across the strings of a harp filling the air with the harsh dry sound of sapless leaves. It is the main theme of the autumn music, this murmuring counterpoint of dead leaves.

  Patience Strong

  Summer, Moving, Autumn

  Patience Strong (1951). “The Glory of the Garden”

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• Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.

  Meg Wolitzer

  Motivation, Variation, Realizing

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• A long-term relationship is about showing up and working hard and banking on each other. If one's down, the other might be up and can help the other one up, and sometimes you're both down and you just [band] together. Endurance is a big theme of it for me. That might not sound romantic, but I kind of think that it is.

  Rob Delaney

  Thinking, Long, Endurance

  "'Catastrophe' Creators Talk Rom-Coms and Romantic 'Endurance': 'It's Love Under Pressure'". Interview with Paige Phelan, www.hollywoodreporter.com. July08, 2015.

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• Everyone has a story, the air is full of stories. The creative process is mysterious, I don't know why it is that suddenly a theme will take hold of me and refuse to leave me in peace until I investigate it and write it.

  Isabel Allende

  Writing, Air, Creative

  Interview with Marisel Mendoza, www.ventanalatina.co.uk. April 10, 2013.

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• I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"

  George Saunders

  America, Long, Intellectual

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.

  George Saunders

  Book, Thinking, Stories

  Source: www.nationalbook.org

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• I hammer on a theme until I'm tired of it and the audience is tired of it.

  Lewis Black

  Tired, Hammers, Audience

  Interview with Tom Lewis, www.scpr.org. September 7, 2012.

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• I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently political." I'm just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Grief, Character, Writing

  Interview with Crystal Wilkinson, appalachianheritage.net. November 20, 2014.

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