Vague Quotes - Page 20

• The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.

  Larry McMurtry

  Sadness, People, Sorrow

  Larry McMurtry (2010). “Some Can Whistle”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

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• I do think that the idea of writer's block can be very self-defeating for most writers because it's taking a lot of things that are not only real problems, but that are manageable, solvable problems if you look at them in an individual fashion, and lumping them under the umbrella of something mysterious and vague, which makes it very, very difficult to address what's going on.

  Emily Barton

  Fashion, Block, Real

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Ger-mans love the ambiguous word, verbal assonances as ends in themselves,vague concepts. Anglosaxons are more clear.

  Erich Fromm

  Ends, Assonance, Ambiguous

  Source: www.scribd.com

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• When you look at that key question what is President-elect [Donald] Trump going to do, it's hard to glean that from his campaign. The kind of - the promise is vague and sweeping, but vague in places. Also contradictory at times.

  George Stephanopoulos

  Keys, Promise, President

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Sometimes I will give some very vague directions to the designer that I'm working with on a particular project and they'll come back and surprise me with something that really shows a lot of their own 'hand' in it. Other times I'll have a really clear idea about how I want it done and I'll draw it out pretty precisely and say 'make it look exactly like this' and it will be something where it looks like I can say it was 'fully my design'. The work can also range between the two.

  Michael Bierut

  Hands, Ideas, Two

  Source: facingsideways.com

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• When I applied to Stanford, I applied for graduate work in the PhD program, not to the creative writing program, mostly because though I had some vague ambition of becoming a writer and I was trying to write poems and essays and stories, I didn't feel like I was far enough along to submit work to some place and have it judged.

  Robert Hass

  Writing, Ambition, Creative

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What usually happens is that when I'm nearing the end of one novel a vague idea about what I want to do next begins to present itself to me in terms of theme. And I would say over about the next six to eight months, usually as I'm out power walking in the morning, or when I'm cooking at night, or when I'm driving in the car, the people who might embody those themes take on a sharper and sharper focus. And there comes this sort of critical mass moment when they actually start to do things in my head.

  Anna Quindlen

  Morning, Night, Ideas

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• There's also really no way of knowing what Donald Trump is going to do - he's been sufficiently vague in his policy positions.

  Willie Parker

  Knowing, Way, Trump

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• I'd go on runs [on cocaine ], four and five days without sleep. Then I'd crash and sleep about 18 hours a day for seven to ten days. Then it would take a few more weeks to get over a vague sort of depression. Then I'd be off on another run.

  George Carlin

  Running, Sleep, Goes On

  Source: reprints.longform.org

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• People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse.

  Wole Soyinka

  Believe, Garden, Views

  Source: saharareporters.com

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• Campaigns are fun. Campaigns are police escorts, they're airplanes, they're crowds, they're balloons, they're bands, a lot of fun. You speak in vague generalities. You get applause for slogans. And then governing comes. And governing is tedious and it's difficult an it's time-consuming and it demands your attention. And policy isn't vague generalities. It's specifics and it's based on knowledge.

  Mark Shields

  Fun, Airplane, Police

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• People choose the most flattering photos of themselves to put on Facebook. Text messages can be vague and confusing. But conversations are confusing too. And some people wear lots of makeup. I think it's just hard to be a person.

  Chelsea Martin

  Makeup, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The walk is like a matrix, like a diffuse, vague happening. It's like - imagine a play, a work of theatre, that is totally vague, almost devoid of details that consists in one person going on a walk. And as a consequence, there is a necessary tension between the determinacy and indeterminacy, the definite and the indefinite, of possibility.

  Sergio Chejfec

  Play, Theatre, Details

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena.... But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Ideas, Long, Mind

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.136, Princeton University Press

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• By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life.

  Anna Quindlen

  Disappointment, Age, Metaphor

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• When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the religion of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes

  C. S. Lewis

  Decay, Holy Places, Amulets

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Allegory of Love”, p.403, Cambridge University Press

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• There is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they are persons, they are not some vague idea in the clouds. This God spray does not exist! The three persons exist!

  Pope Francis

  Father, Son, Clouds

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• The way I understand the rules on trading on inside information, it's very vague.

  Steven A. Cohen

  Information, Way, Trading

  "To Catch a Trader". "Frontline", www.pbs.org. January 7, 2014.

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• I have always felt that a lot of the most interesting work, not just mine but other people's, falls into [the] nether area, somewhere between the worlds of documentary and photojournalism (two very vague words) and the world of art. I think a lot of street photography falls into this nether area.

  Alex Webb

  Photography, Art, Fall

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• I found myself in the changed man theory the other night thinking, "Yeah." I thought, "My god. If we could do this again," but there was nothing specific there. There's just the kind of vague sensation of how I'd like it to go. I allowed myself that gift to think that.

  Pierce Brosnan

  Thinking, Night, Men

  Source: collider.com

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• A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.

  Edward Gibbon

  Justice, Abuse, Arbitrary

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V4: the History Focus”, p.186, 谷月社

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• I think every good song tells a story, as ambiguous and vague as it may be. And if you know what a song is talking about, it can only help your performance.

  David Cook

  Song, Thinking, Talking

  "'Idol' moments with winner David Cook". Interview with Misha Berson, www.seattletimes.com. July 8, 2008.

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• What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

  Bernardo Bertolucci

  Dreamer, Directors, Cinema

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• When you start, it's very cold, an impossible task. But then maybe the characters start to take on a little bit of life, or the story takes a turn that you don't expect ... With me that happens a lot because I don't outline, I just have a vague notion. So it's always felt like less of a made thing and more of a found thing. That's exciting. That's a thrill.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Character, Tasks

  "Stephen King on the Creative Process, the State of Fiction, and More". Interview with James Parker, www.theatlantic.com. April 12, 2011.

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• Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.

  John Lahr

  Discovery, Games, Play

  "The Human Circus" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. March 1, 2010.

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