Quotes about genre

A collection of quotes on the topic of genre, likeness, first, thinking.

Quotes about genre

“In my opinion, and beyond the different definitions about this literary genre or the absurd academic discrepancies about its constitution or taxonomy, the story is above all an experiential art.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Grupo Ígneo. Interview. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/jose-baroja-el-cuento-es-un-trago-breve/

Art

“Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters' sex appeal sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters.”

Scarlett Johansson (1984) American actress, model, and singer

Of her role as Black Widow in Iron Man 2, in Teen Hollywood (3 May 2010) http://www.teenhollywood.com/2010/05/03/interview-gwyneth-and-scarlett-iron-mans-ladies Context: Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters' sex appeal sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters. When you have a sexy secretary, or a girl swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, you know that’s innately sexy, but the fact is that these characters are intelligent. They’re ambitious. They’re motivated and calculated to some degree.

Sex, Thinking

“The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

46
Empire

War, World, Literature

“Karthik Raja is immensely talented. It’s unfortunate he hasn’t got the right break. Be it technology, manuscript or knowledge of genres, he is thorough. I’m sure he will make it ASAP.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Knowledge

“Most of the adventure genre is about how there is some enemy that's lurking, and someone rises up to confront it and maintain order. There's no getting away from that story.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

“The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.”

Richard Wagner book Opera and Drama

Opera and Drama (1851)

Art, Music, Error

“The real difference, to my mind, is between romantic fiction, which all these genres are a part of, and mimetic fiction, or naturalistic fiction.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Weird Tales (24 May 2007) http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2007/05/24/george-rr-martin-on-magic-vs-science/ Context: I think that for science fiction, fantasy, and even horror to some extent, the differences are skin-deep. I know there are elements in the field, particularly in science fiction, who feel that the differences are very profound, but I do not agree with that analysis. I think for me it is a matter of the furnishings. An elf or an alien may in some ways fulfill the same function, as a literary trope. It’s almost a matter of flavor. The ice cream can be chocolate or it can be strawberry, but it’s still ice cream. The real difference, to my mind, is between romantic fiction, which all these genres are a part of, and mimetic fiction, or naturalistic fiction.

Parting

“I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

“Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Life, Time

“There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Books

“I have the death sentence in seven genres.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Death

“I am self-educated from genre books.”

Charlaine Harris (1951) American writer

Books, Education

“The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

Problem

“Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die…”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Fate, Birth

“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)
Context: Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

Life, Science

“Matthew Lewis [was] the genre's first punk, the Johnny Rotten of the Gothic novel.”

Matthew Lewis (writer) (1775–1818) English novelist and dramatist

Stephen King, in Matthew Lewis The Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. vi.
Criticism

“Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism clearly enough so that there can be no question of translating it, at the trial of the real world, as evidence for the defense. It could, on the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state of distraction which we hope to achieve here below. Kant's absentmindedness regarding women, Pasteur's absentmindedness about 'grapes', Curies absentmindedness with respect to vehicles, are in this regard profoundly symptomatic. This world is only very relatively in tune with thought, and incidents of this kind are only the most obvious episodes of a war in which I am proud to be participating. 'Ce monde nest que très relativement à la mesure de la pensée et les incidents de ce genre ne sont que les épisodes jusquici les plus marquants dune guerre dindépendence à laquelle je me fais gloire de participer'. Surrealism is the 'invisible ray' which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. 'You are no longer trembling, carcass.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
The last sentences of the Surrealist Manifesto, 1924
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Women, War, World, Hope

“The genre is broad and includes life.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Life

“As vampire movies go, few are more memorable than Nosferatu, which is not only the first screen version of Dracula, but, in some ways, remains the best. Unlike many of his predecessors who dabbled in the vampire genre, Murnau was a craftsman, and the care he lavished upon this production is evident in each shot and every scene. Alongside The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, few motion pictures have had a more profound impact upon an entire genre than Nosferatu has had upon the legion of horror movies that trailed in its wake.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/n/nosferatu.html of Nosferatu (1922). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Way

“My early work in newspaper comics and comic books allowed me to entertain millions of readers weekly, but I always felt there was more to say. I pioneered the use of comics for instructional manuals for American soldiers, covering three major wars, and later used comics to educate grade school children. Both were heady responsibilities that I took very seriously. But I yearned to do still more with the medium. At an age when I could have "retired," I chose instead to create literary comics, than a decidedly oxymoronic term. Acceptance has not always been easy, but I have seen it arrive in my lifetime. It has been most gratifying to see the graphic novel and many of its exceptional creators gradually become an accepted part of the book world. I couldn't find a major publisher to take A Contract With God only a quarter century ago, and now graphic novels represent the book industry's fastest growing genre.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIX-XX, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

God, War, Children, Books

“I'm not crossing over from anything. I think of it as pop music with different influences. "When I walk in the music store, [my] album is under classical/pop/easy listening. It's hard to say what genre it is. It's genreless. I try not to define what it is. I let the audience define it. Because for me, it's just me.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

UK Sunday Times, 5/9/04

Music, Thinking

“The etude is a Romantic idea. It appeared in the early nineteenth century as a new genre: a short piece in which the musical interest is derived almost entirely from a single technical problem. A mechanical difficulty directly produces the music, its charm, and its pathos. Beauty and technique are united, but the creative stimulus is the hand, with its arrangement of muscles and tendons, its idiosyncratic shape.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Beauty, Music, Idea, Problem

“A genre is maintained by the conventions of a community, and in most cases serves specific functions within the system of practices of particular institutions of that community.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Lemke, J. (2005). "Multimedia genres and transversals." Folia Linguistica, 39(1-2): 45-56. p. 46

Communication

“I’m constantly searching for right roles, trying to find what suits me the best. Once I find my metier, I’ll elaborate on that, polish my act and then move on. Some actors quickly find a genre they’re comfortable with and then they perfect it. Others do diverse things until they find what suits them. I’m doing the latter. I still haven’t found the role that I can do full justice to. I’m discovering myself as an actor.”

Abhishek Bachchan (1976) Indian actor

His "peer review" on acting, Deccan Chronicle (February 7, 2016), "Still haven’t found a role I can do justice to: Abhishek Bachchan" http://www.deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/bollywood/070216/still-haven-t-found-a-role-i-can-do-justice-to-abhishek-bachchan.html

Justice, Search, Perfection

“Parodies are hard to do well, as is shown by the mediocrity of so many recent attempts. No matter how ripe a genre is for satirizing, unless you know how to do it, there are no guarantees.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/r/robin_tights.html of Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Two-and-a-half star reviews

“Any literature, when it arrives at being good literature, transcends genre.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Literature

“By and large, horror fiction is the most difficult to domesticate because part of the point is that it's one step ahead – or behind – everybody else's taste. And I'm not really convinced I'd like it to change. There's something very healthy about horror fiction being always a little bit on the outside. It's the wild-dog genre.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

Dogs, Change, Parting

“I recently published a book about movies I hated, and people have been asking me which reviews are harder to write — those about great movies, or those about terrible ones. The answer is neither. The most unreviewable movies are those belonging to the spoof genre — movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun and all the countless spin-offs and retreads of the same basic idea… the bottom line in reviewing a movie like this is, does it work? Is it funny? Yes, it is. Not funny with the shocking impact of Airplane! which had the advantage of breaking new ground. But also not a tired wheeze like some of the lesser and later Leslie Nielsen films. To get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises, and if you are, Scary Movie delivers the goods.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scary-movie-2000 of Scary Movie (7 July 2000) Reviews, Three star reviews

Money, Hate, People, Books

“What we've lost - 'I said in more or less these terms' - is the proper interest in and taste for detail. We've been noting that for a long time yet the loss is irremediable. In the old days man was everything. A human face was worth a poem. When nature appeared behind a human being it was a kind of backdrop taking the place of the dark background of portrait painters or the gold of the Italian primitives… The day when a separation took place art was diminished. It was transformed the day that the 'subject' and the 'genre' destroyed great painting, denaturing even landscapes.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote of Fromentin, as cited by Sarah Anderson in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, 'Chapter IV', Eugène Fromentin, (1859); transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Art, Nature, Appearance, Loss

“We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science—if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"Darwin at Sea—and the Virtues of Port", p. 348
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

Literature, Understanding, Science

“The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

Interview in 2006, as quoted in "Gary Gygax, Game Pioneer, Dies at 69" in The New York Times (5 March 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/arts/05gygax.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin

Secret, Imagination, Game

“Beautifully written… the webs of imagery that Harris has so carefully woven… contains writing of which our best writers would be proud… there is not a singly ugly or dead sentence…' - or so sang the critics. Hannibal is a genre novel, and all genre novels contain dead sentences - unless you feel the throb of life in such periods as 'Tommaso put the lid back on the cooler' or 'Eric Pickford answered' or 'Pazzi worked like a man possessed' or 'Margot laughed in spite of herself' or 'Bob Sneed broke the silence.' What these commentators must be thinking of, I suppose, are the bits when Harris goes all blubbery and portentous (every other phrase a spare tyre), or when, with a fugitive poeticism, he swoons us to a dying fall: 'Starling looked for a moment through the wall, past the wall, out to forever and composed herself…' 'It seemed forever ago…' 'He looked deep, deep into her eyes…' 'His dark eyes held her whole…' Needless to say, Harris has become a serial murderer of English sentences, and Hannibal is a necropolis of prose.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of Hannibal by Thomas Harris, p. 240
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Silence

“I don’t play a lot of video games outside of work because for me video games are work. There are a lot of things I choose to do with my free time besides play games. But whenever I do hear about something interesting – if there is a new game that has a particularly interesting hook – that is something I will want to spend some time playing. But when it comes to genre, I definitely don’t specify one particular genre that I’m interested in. I’ll absolutely play anything in regards to genre.”

Eiji Aonuma (1963) Japanese video game designer

Zelda Producer Eiji Aonuma Talks Creating Majora's Mask And His Personal Hobbies http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/02/21/zelda-eiji-aonuma-interview.aspx?PostPageIndex=3 (February 21, 2015)

Game, Time

“I really love seeing things go sour, because that’s the way dread creeps into life. A lot of horror films start with a great shock scene. I grew up on that model and it’s great fun, but very perversely, I’m interested in setting up something else, where you’re really engaged with the humanity of the characters — you could be in a normal drama with its own set of problems — and then something else develops. I like this philosophical question: what comes first, reality or your interpretation of it? However interesting that is, and whether it fits in with the horror genre, I don’t know, but I think it makes perfect sense.”

Larry Fessenden (1963) American actor, producer, writer, director, film editor, and cinematographer

Larry Fessenden’s Arty Horror Picture Show Continues with “Wendigo” http://www.indiewire.com/2002/02/interview-larry-fessendens-arty-horror-picture-show-continues-with-wendigo-80532/ (February 14, 2002)

Love, Life, Way, Question

“'Live for Loving You' is a kind of song that really can live in many different genres. And, of course, when you do your live performances the first time that you perform a song you want to stay true to the record: because tha's what people want to hear, they want to hear the hit. But then after you have done it fifty thousand times and through many, many different tours, you start experimenting and doing stuff to surprise people. So, the cut that we are doing here for the "iTunes Orginal" is something that we love to do -- because we just took it and really broke it down to a Samba. You know, the Brazilians have an amazing edge -- percussively, I think -- they have amazing rhythms. And this song really fit that rhythm very nicely. So, we wanted to do it acoustically and really cool -- and like we've done many times on tour. Just break it down to just acoustic, no synths and things of that nature: just make it organic. And I love that song for that reason: because you could perform it with just a couple of bongos and some vocals if you had to. And it would still work.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007, 2008

Love, People, Nature, Thinking

“Composing a score is like getting in one of those mini-submarines that take you to the bottom of the ocean. You crawl into this little bubble, seal yourself away from the outside world and dive deep into uncharted territory. Sometimes the places you explore are dark, sometimes they’re light. If you have the right tools and knowledge you can explore wherever you like and have a great experience. It’s a crude analogy to genre hopping, but it’s accurate. I was lucky as a kid to be exposed to so much different material. I watched cartoons and read all kinds of comics as much as I buried my head in scary stuff. It makes going from talking animals one day to shape-shifters the next pretty easy. Truth is, most composers are pinballs. They can bounce around from style to style and adapt really well.”

Michael Wandmacher (1967) composer

Michael Wandmacher (‘The Last Exorcism II’) On Composing Horror http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3233495/interview-michael-wandmacher-the-last-exorcism-ii-on-composing-horror/ (May 17, 2013)

Truth, World, Knowledge, Light

“Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. […] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 653

Women, Men, Sex, Mathematics

“In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Death, Books, Problem, Reading

“Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994 of Speed (10 June 1994) Reviews, Four star reviews

Personality, Speed

“Is that a sacrilege that I praise a Holocaust movie [Schindler's List] for being entertaining? The word doesn't imply that a movie need be cheerful. In my mind, entertainment in this genre springs from characters who are brought to full life, who we care about and who are set in a powerful story. My motto: "No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing."”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/in-darkness-2011 of In Darkness (15 February 2012) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Life, Spring

“Moonlighting was funny, innovative, genre-busting chaos. Also, apparently, unsustainable. Sigh.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

Ain't It Cool News interview (17 July 2003) http://www.whedon.info/Jane-Espenson-Buffy-Tv-Series.h

“The same year [1835] I made my debut at the Exposition in Rotterdam with [his painting] "the St. Janskerk in ’s Hertogenbosch, the interior", which immediately found a merchant... The approval by this, [and] the renewed appreciation I got in Felix 38, now concerning a 'church with incident sunlight', together with my personal characteristic tendency to reproduce the impressions which church buildings gave me, led me gradually to choose and prefer this genre [church-interiors], [and to visit] Belgium in '37 and repeatedly to return there, attracted by the abundance of study [many churches], that this country offered me..”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in orogineel Nederlands: In hetzelfde jaar [1835] had ik op de Expositie te Rotterdam gedebuteerd met 'de St. Janskerk te 's Hertogenbosch van binnen', die terstond een kooper vond.. .De bijval hiermee behaald, [en] de hernieuwde bekrooning in Felix 38) nu voor eene 'kerk met inVallend zonlicht', gevoegd bij mijn bijzondere neiging om de indrukken weer te geven, die kerkgebouwen op mij maakten, leidde er mij gaandeweg toe dit genre [schilderijen van kerk-interieurs] bij voorkeur te kiezen; [en om] in '37 in Belgie te gaan bezoeken en herhaaldelijk daar weer te keeren, aangetrokken door den overvloed van studie [veel kerken], dien dat land mij aanbood..
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 11

Study, Painting, Personality, Country

“On those rare occasions when a great motion picture reaches multiplexes, the film critic must add another aspect to his or her job description: that of cheerleader. It is incumbent upon those of us who routinely dissect movies to applaud the arrival of something like Minority Report. Writing a review isn't enough — we have to get out there and actively stump for the movie. The underlying reason is sound: if Minority Report makes a lot of money, the studios will be encouraged to fashion more films of this sort. And that is a good thing — not just for science fiction lovers but for fans of intelligent, thought-provoking pictures of all genres.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/m/minority_report.html of Minority Report (2002). Four star reviews

Money, Intelligence, Lovers, Fashion

“And for the genre stuff I'm a big fan of Carpenter, Romero, Peckinpah, and Polanski, because they're unremitting and real and brilliant at showing characters under unbearable stress and unafraid of challenging us with uncomfortable truths as well as being just incredible filmmakers.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Washington City Paper, Creative Loafing Inc., Tricia, Olszewski, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/02/13/interview-with-donkey-punch-director-olly-blackburn/, 13 February 2009, 23 February 2012, Interview With Donkey Punch Director Olly Blackburn]

Truth

“It's the unreal, sustained glitch in naturalism that makes this genre of TV disturbing to either watch or be on. The Lynchian subjugation of our humanity; warmth and humour, usurped by a sterile, pastel-coloured steel blade benignly thrust again and again into a grey brain.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Nature

“From historical burdens such as slavery and injustice to the celebration of faith, much of the origin of African-American music reflects our national story. The work songs, shouts and hollers, spirituals, and ragtime of an earlier era laid the creative foundation for many of America' s most distinctive and popular musical genres. These include rhythm and blues, jazz, hip hop, gospel, rap, and the roots of rock and roll.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Faith, Music

“I suppose there is something appealing about a word that everyone uses with absolute confidence but on whose exact meaning no two people can agree. The word that I’m thinking of right now is genre, one of those French words, like crêpe, that no one can pronounce both correctly and without sounding pretentious.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Introduction to McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (2004)

People, Confidence, Thinking

“Calcutta, for me, was a particular idea of the modern city, and I found it in many forms, works, and genres. … by ‘modernity’ I have in mind something that was never new. True modernity was born with the aura of inherited decay and life. … if you look at paintings and photographs, and see old films of the city, you notice that these walls and buildings were never new – that Calcutta was born to look more or less as I saw it as a child. I’m not referring here to an air of timelessness; the patina that gave to Calcutta’s alleys, doorways, and houses their continuity and disposition is very different from the eternity that defines mausoleums and monuments. It’s this quality I’m trying to get at when I speak of modernity. … modernity in the nineteenth century is indistinguishable from nature; perhaps it is nature – in some ways, the culvert, which has emerged from the rock, seems more of its place than the mountain itself.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

citation needed
On Modernity

Life, Way, Mountain, Idea

“The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical topics serves the same purposes as does the encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional theological topics. Like the rise of large market economies, the increase in literacy, the proliferation of artistic genres, and the insouciant pluralism of contemporary culture, such philosophical superficiality and light-mindedness helps along the disenchantment of the world. It helps make the world’s inhabitants more pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal, more receptive to the appeal of instrumental rationality.”

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) American philosopher

"The priority of democracy to philosophy"

World, Light, Help

“I love working on genre films.”

François-Eudes Chanfrault (1974–2016) Composer and musician

CinemaFantastique.net interview (October 2, 2008)

Love

“Why westerns get segregated into a genre in Hollywood, I don't know… It's just good entertainment.”

Tom Selleck (1945) American actor

Interview with American Western Magazine (January 2001).

“Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning. He wrote most of the great stories and was influential in setting the style and genre other writers would emulate … I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective.”

Bob Kane (1915–1998) American comic book artist, the creator of Batman

[Bob Kane and Tom Andrae, Batman & Me, Eclipse Books, Forestville, CA, 1989, 1-56060-017-9, 43]

“I think about it sometimes, but it definitely doesn't bother me because genres are meant to last and we're a rock 'n roll band and screamo, emo, grunge, punk, prog … it s still rock 'n roll to me. I think that we're four really talented dudes, and I'm ready to take on the whole world. I'm not afraid.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

On his "singer emo poster-child status", interview in John Benson (March 4, 2005) "Emo disorder It's not called chaos for nothing, says nonheadlining headliner", The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, p. 4.

World, Thinking

“It’s always a joy to work with Spike. He creates an environment that’s wonderful for creativity. People leave their egos at the door and just we all come from different genres and different levels within the business. It’s kind of exciting to finally meet people like Common, John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson and work with them, and see what the flavors are. You know the most seasoned veterans, we always want to see what the young guys, the young crew, has to offer. If they learn something and if they bring something to the table or if they should just be written off.”

Wesley Snipes (1962) film actor, Martial artist, film producer

Wesley Snipes, Comic Con: Wesley Snipes On ‘Blade’ Marvel Talks, ‘The Player’ & Spike Lee http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/, Deadline Hollywood, 9 July 2015

People, Guy, Business, Learning

“Natural historians tend to avoid tendentious preaching in this philosophical mode (although I often fall victim to such temptations in these essays). Our favored style of doubting is empirical: if I wish to question your proposed generality, I will search for a counterexample in flesh and blood. Such counterexamples exist in abundance, for they form a staple in a standard genre of writing in natural history — the “wonderment of oddity” or “strange ways of the beaver” tradition.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Reversing Established Orders", p. 394
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Way, History, Search, Question

“Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.”

Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) Mexican writer

"How I Started to Write", in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker (eds.) The Graywolf Annual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988); cited from Myself With Others (London: Pan, 1989) p. 27.

Reading

“Although The Terminator is arguably the more visionary of the first two films, [Terminator 2] is the more visually and viscerally satisfying. It's an exhausting experience and, even 18 years after its release (as I write this review), few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1632 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Science

“What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 3, 79

Dogs, Literature

“I don't think there are any irredeemable themes or tropes, just ones that are waiting for a fresh eye. Horror, science fiction, and fantasy deal with the eternal verities, the subjects that have always - and will always - speak most deeply about who we are. That's why they're the most fascinating genres, and why they're always there to be reinvented. At the very least you can ask, "This subject has been done to death now, so why are we so obsessed with it?"”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

and take a new angle from there.
Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Death, Thinking, Science, Waiting

“From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Age, World, Music, Soul

“I always enjoyed horror, both as a kid and as a young man. Then when I was doing stunts in horror movies and was lucky enough to get the role as Jason the first time then that’s when everything changed. Once you get known in horror then every small horror film wants you to be in their movie because your name is known in the horror genre and that helps sell the movie. Very often, if they’re smart, they will offer you different kind of roles which I personally love. When somebody offers me something that I’ve never done before, that’s what I’m looking for.”

Kane Hodder (1955) Horror film actor

Interview: Kane Hodder Talks Stunt Work, Acting and His Career in Horror http://www.geekchicelite.com/interview-kane-hodder-talks-stunt-work-acting-and-his-career-in-horror/ (September 10, 2015)

Love, Change, Time, Help

“This is a little parable about cities and genres; how, while some of them lose their imaginative centrality, others take their place.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Calcutta: Two Years in The City (2013)

Imagination

“A scene like Peter's denial fits into no antique genre. It is too serious for comedy, too contemporary and everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history—and the form which was given it is one of such immediacy that its like does not exist in the literature of antiquity.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 45

History, Literature

“Politics becomes a horse race, and a tragicomedy motivated by greed, backstage manoeuvres, betrayals, and, often, sex and violence – a genre increasingly indistinguishable from TV scripts.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society (2000), p. 13

Sex, Motivation, Betrayal, Horse

“I try to avoid categorizing music as much as I can, though. Everyone steals so much from everyone else these days, the lines between genres are very washed-out.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Music

“I believe […] that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. […] I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and—if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills—on the businessman's special to Tokyo.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life

Preface, p. 16
Wonderful Life (1989)

People, Books, Hope, Intelligence

“This is just my personal take, but to me the definition of survival horror is a game where fear and the sense of exhilaration coincide. So some of the games out there don’t exactly fit my definition. But I don’t have any rights to the definition of the genre so people can call them survival horror if they feel it fits. Basically, I understand that the spectrum of what survival horror is to the general public is pretty wide.”

Shinji Mikami (1965) Japanese video game designer

An Interview With Shinji Mikami, The Father Of Survival Horror http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/09/10/an-interview-with-shinji-mikami-the-father-of-survival-horror.aspx (September 10, 2014)

People, Fear, Feeling, Game

“Pity those—adventurers, adolescents, authors of young adult fiction—who make their way in the borderland between worlds. It is at worst an invisible and at best an inhospitable place. Build your literary house on the borderlands, as the English writer Philip Pullman has done, and you may find that your work is recommended by booksellers, as a stopgap between installments of Harry Potter, to children who cannot (one hopes) fully appreciate it, and to adults, disdainful or baffled, who 'don't read fantasy.' Yet all mystery resides there, in the margins, between life and death, childhood and adulthood, Newtonian and quantum, 'serious' and 'genre' literature. And it is from the confrontation with mystery that the truest stories have always drawn their power.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Dust & Daemons, The New York Review of Books (March 25, 2004)

Life, Death, Children, World

“Tagore claims that the first time he experienced the thrill of poetry was when he encountered the children’s rhyme ‘Jal pare/pata nare’ (‘Rain falls / The leaf trembles') in Iswarchandra Vidyasagar’s Bengali primer Barna Parichay (Introducing the Alphabet). There are at least two revealing things about this citation. The first is that, as Bengali scholars have remarked, Tagore’s memory, and predilection, lead him to misquote and rewrite the lines. The actual rhyme is in sadhu bhasha, or ‘high’ Bengali: ‘Jal paritechhe / pata naritechhe’ (‘Rain falleth / the leaf trembleth’). This is precisely the sort of diction that Tagore chose for the English Gitanjali, which, with its thees and thous, has so tried our patience. Yet, as a Bengali poet, Tagore’s instinct was to simplify, and to draw language closer to speech. The other reason the lines of the rhyme are noteworthy, especially with regard to Tagore, is – despite their deceptively logical progression – their non-consecutive character. ‘Rain falls’ and ‘the leaf trembles’ are two independent, stand-alone observations: they don’t necessarily have to follow each other. It’s a feature of poetry commented upon by William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral: that it’s a genre that can get away with seamlessly joining two lines which are linked, otherwise, tenuously.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (2012)

Children, Memory, Time, Drawing

“I am a genre lover – everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Talking Fiction (Rolling Stone, 2003) http://www.tarantino.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=310&Itemid=41.

Lovers

“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

Art

“Rowling got millions of young people reading, who grew up to be consumers who branched out into other authors and genres. You shouldn’t yell at her. You should thank her.”

Larry Correia (1977) American fantasy writer

"How Authors Get Paid, part 2", Monster Hunter Nation http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/25/how-authors-get-paid-part-2/, 2015-06-15

People, Reading

“I've always thought of fantasy as a genre of best-case scenarios, and horror as a genre of worst-case scenarios.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

DC Comics interview http://www.dccomics.com/features/vertigox/vaughan.html

“Of course I see both the things. For an actor you don’t have as many years to work as others do. I cannot work from 18 – 50 years of age. No doubt now there are different genres that are giving equally importance to older woman. It’s like make hay when there’s sunshine. I don’t take up a show for money, I take it up for the concept and then I see if the money is good or not.”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

First offer money or character? http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/drashti-dhami-i-dont-take-weight-criticism-negatively-because-i-know-i-need-to-cut-down-a-few-kilos/

Money, Age

“I was familiar with that and “Rio Bravo.” “Rio Bravo” was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.”

John Leguizamo (1964) Colombian and American actor, film producer, voice artist, and comedian

John Leguizamo Talks About "Assault on Precinct 13", January 16, 2005. http://movies.about.com/od/assaultonprecinct13/a/assaultjl011205.htm

Time

“All the genres of philosophy, science, high art, athletics and politics were invented by men. But by the Promethean law of conflict and capture, woman has a right to seize what she will and vie with man on her own terms.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 9

Men, Law, Art, Science

“I was reading about and looking at Mantegna [Italian early-Renaissance painter]. I can sense how good he is for me. His enormous plasticity - it has such powerful substance. That is just what is lacking in my things. I could do something about that if I could add his substantiality to the greatness of form I'm struggling for. At present I see before my eyes very simple and barely articulated things. My second major stumbling is my lack of intimacy. Mackensen's [her former teacher] way of portraying the people here is not great enough for me, too genre like. Whoever could, ought to capture them in runic script..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1898; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 197
1898

People, Way, Sense, Teachers

“The first documentary I saw as a child was Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) broadcast one Sunday afternoon. Nanook enchanted me by his courage to smile in a frozen wasteland, and by the simple fact that he wore a fur coat rather than a military uniform: this gentle hunter wasn’t a conqueror. Later, I understood how great Flaherty was: he told a timeless story without using commentary or pedagogues, and he didn’t interview Nanook like a celebrity or an aggressive talk-show host. He remained off-screen, observing and listening to create that exceptional complicity we feel in this documentary that eschews didacticism. The emotion of life found its counterpart in the emotion of art - a rare and precious achievement in a genre that is often limited to the emotion of the informational narrative.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On documentary influences, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Life, Smile, Art, Feeling

“.. that my drawings which offer - also by variety of genre - a greater variety [compared to his paintings], especially after 1863, when my late friend jr. CCA Ridder van Rappard urged me to reserve especially for him all the new works I would make and such including the freedom not to limit myself exclusively to my main genre [churches]. In the environment around his estate in the Sticht where he stayed, it became therefore the treshing-floors of the farms and the house-interiors which immediately attracted and inspired me to achieve a new personal interpretation of these subjects.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in origineel Nederlands: ..dat mijner teekeningen, die ook door verscheidenheid van genre een grooter afwisseling aanbieden [dan zijn schilderijen] vooral na 1863, toen wijlen mijn vriend jhr. C. C. A. Ridder van Rappard er bij mij op aandrong om wat ik verder zou leveren voor hem te bestemmen en zulks met de vrijheid mij niet uitsluitend te houden bij mijn hoofdgenre [de kerken]. In den omtrek van het door hem betrokken landgoed in het Sticht waren het dan ook de boerendeelen en binnenhuizen, die mij dadelijk aantrokken en inspireerden tot een nieuwe eigen opvatting daarvan.
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 13-14

Freedom, Drawing, Painting, Housing

“Time-travel has a uniquely intimate, and seductively morbid, relationship to both fiction and history, because it scrambles the very principle of narrative order in profundity. If Western media authorities assumed the same role of cultural custodianship that has been traditional among their Chinese peers, they too might have been compelled to denounce a genre that flagrantly subverted the foundational principle of Aristotelian poetics: that any story worthy of veneration should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If time-travel can occur, it seems (at least initially) that order is an illusion, so that fiction and reality switch places.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Twisted Times (part 1)" https://web.archive.org/web/20130301034415/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/blog/view/12498 (2013)

Travel, History, Reality, Time

“I don’t think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.”

P. D. James (1920–2014) English crime writer

Interview with Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph, 26 Sep 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6227400/PD-James-Queen-of-Detective-Fiction-Interview.html. Other

Thinking

“Vangelis has been writing and performing electronic music for three decades and suggests that it is perhaps the only genre - with the exception of "pure" classical music - that can comunicate universally.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

https://books.google.hr/books?id=_hMEAAAAMBAJ
Vangelis Prepares For Blastoff On Musical Mission To Mars
Maria Paravantes
August 25, 2001
Billboard
113
34
50
0006-2510
2001

Music, Universe

“.. truly, if I sometimes of my work under the eyes, I love a genre [churches! ], which in the fullest sense of saying may be called 'mine.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

the word 'mine' double underlined version in original Dutch (citaat van een brief van Johannes Bosboom, in het Nederlands:) ..waarlijk, als ik soms van mijn werk onder de oogen krijg, dan heb ik een genre lief [kerken!], dat in den volsten zin des woords het mijne mag heten. [het woord 'mijne' tweemaal onderstreept] Quote of Bosboom from his letter, 7 May 1865; as cited in Johannes Bosboom by H. F. W. Jeltes, 1916 http://docplayer.nl/32809950-Johannes-bosboom-synagoge-naar-de-schilderij-in-het-museum-te-dordrecht.html (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek) Bosboom's quote is referring to a formerly painted 'consistory room', he painted in Alkmaar 1860's

Love, Sense

“Die Hard represents the class of modern action pictures and the standard by which they must be judged. Few films falling into the "mindless entertainment" genre have as much going for them as this movie. Not only is it a thrill-a-minute ride, but it has one of the best film villains in recent memory, a hero everyone can relate to, dialogue that crackles with wit, and a lot of very impressive pyrotechnics.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/d/die_hard.html of Die Hard (1988). Four star reviews

Memory

“Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are realities; the former, that they are generalizations. For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the universe. The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge. Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"The Nightingale of Keats"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Men, Error, Feeling, Knowledge

“The detective embodies, even more than the romantic drifter, rationality; this intriguing and apparent dichotomy pertains to a significant part of Bengali children’s literature as well – that ofen, especially in the proliferation of adventure, spy and mystery genres in Bengali in the first half of the twentieth century, children’s literature is not so much an escape from the humanist logos of ‘high’ literary practice, but a coming to its irreducible possibilities from a different direction.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Clearing a Space (2008)

Children, Literature, Parting

“Despite my fervour for many Surrealist painters, I was soon wary of the preeminence of those 'literary anecdotes' that made many works appear as 'genre clichés', not unlike nineteenth-century pastiches. They often ignored the visual possibilities of the painting medium.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

as quoted in 'Tàpies: From Within', June/November 2013 - Presse Release text, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 9
1971 - 1980, Memòria Personal', 1977

Appearance, Painting

“[on Phil Anselmo] I think that he's probably one of the more enigmatic frontman of our time. He's tremendously inspirational to vocalists throughout the genre including myself. I know that there's some weirdness regarding the "incident," but I certainly know that Phil would have never in his darkest thoughts ever have wanted any harm to befall Dime. You know the world is a very, very extreme place. When a fan gets so connected to a band that the demise of the band, however they want to interpret it, leads them to question their own lives and their existence… I mean it's weird. There are too many types of music that inspire that passion in people and thankfully metal is one of them. It's just unfortunate that this animal happened to take the demise of Pantera so seriously that he felt that it was justification for him to do what he did. He took the life of probably one of the greatest guitar players to walk the face of the Earth.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

David Draiman talks disturbing thoughts http://www.concertlivewire.com/interviews/disturbed.htm, concertlivewire.com, 19 February 2005)

Life, People, World, Music

“His poetry may be divided into comic extravaganza on the one hand, and more personal work on the other. There is no one like him in the world in the former genre; as a "light poet" he is preferable to John Betjeman – as fluent in traditional forms, his work is never vitiated by refuge in the poetical or high sentimental, and his choice of words is subtler, funnier and altogether sharper. In his other vein Plomer is fastidious, reticent, elegant and the author of some memorable and moving lines.”

William Plomer (1903–1973) South African-British writer

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1973] 1975) vol. 1, p. 389.
Criticism

World, Light, Personality

“There were two times in my life that inspired me the most. The first was when I was a kid, probably the most emotionally influential time, when you’re naïve and innocent. I went to movie theaters and fell in love with genre films in the 1950s, when there was a big wave of monster movies. My passion came from the young guy who was watching The Fly back in 1958. Then, going to USC I began to watch movies in a different way and was exposed to different kinds of movies, foreign films. We had directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and John Ford come down and lecture us. It was unbelievable!”

John Carpenter (1948) American film director, screenwriter and producer

John Carpenter Q&A: Why ‘Halloween’ Didn’t Need Sequels & What Scares The Master Of Horror http://deadline.com/2014/10/john-carpenter-qa-halloween-sequels-michael-myers-861942/ (October 31, 2014)

Love, Life, Way, Guy

“I love films, I eat, sleep and drink them, and genre definitely had a huge impact.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[The Skinny, Scotland, http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/features/44237-director_olly_blackburn_talks_donkey_punch, Radge Media, 10 November 2008, 23 February 2012, Director Olly Blackburn talks Donkey Punch, Michael, Gillespie]

Love, Drink, Sleep

“When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

A Conversation With Jim Butcher, The SF Site, McCune, Alisa, 2004, 2008-02-04 http://www.sfsite.com/08b/jb182.htm,

Books

“The action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it surfaces in this movie.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Dirty Harry," p. 191.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

“You feel afraid of small, insignificant rulers and obey them; shouldn’t you fear and obey the Sole, Absolute Ruler? He has taken no son for Himself. The Jews say, ‘Uzair-as is the son of Allah’; the Christians claim, ‘Jesus is the son of Allah.’ But He says: ‘I have no son.’ He is the Absolute, the Single; there can be none like Him. A son necessarily belongs to the genre and species of his father. The son of a human being would be a human, the young of an elephant would be an elephant and that of a bird would essentially be a bird, inheriting the attributes of its father. If God had a son, he would have been another god. But, He neither has any son, nor any partner in His sovereignty; He is the Absolute Ruler, no one can interfere with His rule. It is He Who has created everything.”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

God, Fear, Feeling, Bird

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Love, Children, Pleasure, Books

“I think I just kind of thought about all the artists that I really respected throughout the - just any genre of music really and I think everybody that I respected and liked. They were just them. You know, they're people who always stuck to who they were, and were true and honest about who they were. So I think that kind of gave me a real like confidence to just stick at it. Just thinking about people like Bjork - you know, I don't know, Bob Dylan, you know artists that truly were strong in themselves.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

M.I.A. Interview http://web.archive.org/web/20070926225407/http://www.muchmusic.com/music/artists/transcripts.asp?artist=1213 on MuchMusic's MuchOnDemand (September 2005). Sourced quotes

People, Music, Confidence, Thinking

“[I have] done various series of seascapes in different genres, beaches which demonstrated if not great art at least a reasonably faithful reproduction of the people of our age.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin, as cited by Dalya Alberge, in 'Life's a beach: Boudin...' in 'Independent online' http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/lifes-a-beach-boudin-was-well-a-bit-on-the-dull-side-but-his-paintings-were-wild-and-beautiful-dalya-1471851.html, 9 February 1993 Boudin's reaction when a art-critic asked him for some biographical details undated quotes

People, Age, Faith, Art

“I didnt at first because horror movies scared me too much, but I really do love the genre and its a playground where you can really be artistic and create ideas in the minds of the audience and portray the unreal. Its very cool experimentation ground for a filmmaker.”

Sam Raimi (1959) American film director, producer, writer and actor

Interview: Sam Raimi on ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, DARKMAN and THE LAST OF US https://www.comingsoon.net/horror/news/747524-interview-sam-raimi-ash-vs-evil-dead-darkman-last-us#/slide/1 (October 26, 2015)

Love, Idea

“As far as I'm concerned, some of the best literature of the last hundred years has come out of the genre tradition and of course the best of it challenges expectations just as the best of literary fiction challenges those expectations. But it's not that genre fiction is any more a constraint than mimetic fiction. So I see myself very much as a genre writer. I love the fantastic genres. I see what I'm doing as a development of them but very much a part of them. I never feel that I'm leaving them behind. I try and be as experimental and avant-garde and stretching as I can be but I don't see that as turning my back on the genre at all. Genre has always been able to encompass that.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

interview with 3am http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2003/feb/interview_china_mieville.html

Love, Feeling, Literature, Parting

“If it's some style, especially some shrink-wrapped thing hanging on a wall at Toys 'R' Us, then it won't live, it won't be dynamic … It becomes exactly what the marketing people want — a genre, something to make their job easier. But if it's something like, "Everybody's telling me the wall's over there, but I'm going to push against it and see if it's really there"”

Mike Watt (1957) musician, songwriter

to me, that's what punk is. An idealistic attitude.
watt bio (2005)

People