Quotes about story
page 27

“He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995)

Truth

“When Andy [Andrew Wood] died, I couldn't listen to his songs for about two years after that, and it was for that reason — his lyrics often seem as though they can tell that story. But then again, my lyrics often could tell the same one. In terms of seeing everything as a matter of life and death — if that's what you're feeling at the time, then that's what you're going to write. It's sort of a morbid exchange when somebody who is a writer like that dies, and then everyone starts picking through all their lyrics. In Kurt [Cobain]'s case, whatever he was thinking and whatever he was writing, there wasn't an arrow pointing at what his demise was. It's a stream of thought, it's a possibility — it's definitely something that somebody was feeling when they were writing. It doesn't mean that it's going to happen. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't, either.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell: The Rolling Stone Interview, Alec Foege, Rolling Stone, 29 December 1994 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-chris-cornell-19941229, Soundgarden Era

Life, Death, Feeling, Thinking

“My father was able to acquire a copy of the first printed edition of the Granth Saheb of Sri Garibdas soon after it was published from Baroda. He would frequently read it out to my mother and myself with his own running commentary on the lives of saints and bhaktas as they were mentioned in the sakhis and the ragas. I also sat sometimes turning the pages of this work. I hardly had the mental equipment to understand the mystic messages. But the stories of some great saints like Kabir, Nanak, Ravidas, Dadu, Namdev, Chippa, Pipa and Dhanna were very strongly impressed on my mind, as also the stories of renowned Muslim sufis like Rabiya, Mansur, Adham Sultan, Junaid, Bayazid and Shams Tabriz. These stories were to flower into an abiding satsanga (holy company) in years to come.”

Garib Das (1717–1778) Hindu Yogi

Goel, S. R. (2007). How I became a Hindu.

Flowers, Understanding, Reading

“It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 57, p. 179

Peace

“I don’t think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. When I realized what went into—not just, we’re not just even talking about a full-length fur coat, I’m talking about just … fur on your gloves or on your jacket or—what goes into making that little piece of fur ripped my heart out. And as humans, we have control. What if someone said, ‘Black skin is the new fur’?”

Taraji P. Henson (1970) American actress

Interview with PETA (27 January 2011); quoted in "Taraji P. Henson Bares All For PETA" https://teamyee.tv/taraji-p-henson-bares-all-for-peta/, TeamYee.tv.

Fashion, Thinking, Suffering, Heart

“The Duke of Devonshire issues a circular applying for subscriptions to oppose this Bill, and he charges us with the robbery of God. Why, does he not know—of course he knows—that the very foundations of his fortune are laid deep in sacrilege, fortunes built out of desecrated shrines and pillaged altars…I say that charges of this kind brought against a whole people…ought not to be brought by those whose family trees are laden with the fruits of sacrilege. I am not complaining that ancestors of theirs did it, but they are still in the enjoyment of the same property, and they are subscribing out of that property to leaflets which attack us and call us thieves. What is their story? Look at the whole story of the pillage of the Reformation. They robbed the Catholic Church, they robbed the monasteries, they robbed the altars, they robbed the almshouses, they robbed the poor, and they robbed the dead. Then they come here when we are trying to seek, at any rate to recover some part of this pillaged property for the poor for whom it was originally given, and they venture, with hands dripping with the fat of sacrilege, to accuse us of robbery of God.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1912/may/16/second-reading-fourth-days-debate in the House of Commons (12 May 1912) on the Bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Wales Chancellor of the Exchequer

God, People, Family, Tree

“The story of Job shocks the heart of every good man. In this book there is some poetry, some pathos, and some philosophy, but the story of this drama called Job, is heartless to the last degree. The children of Job are murdered to settle a little wager between God and the Devil. Afterward, Job having remained firm, other children are given in the place of the murdered ones. Nothing, however, is done for the children who were murdered.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)

God, Children, Books, Heart

“One’s moviegoing tastes and habits change — I still like in movies what I always liked but now, for example, I really want documentaries. After all the years of stale stupid acted-out stories, with less and less for me in them, I am desperate to know something, desperate for facts, for information, for faces of non-actors and for knowledge of how people live — for revelations, not for the little bits of show-business detail worked up for us by show-business minds who got them from the same movies we’re tired of.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

People, Stupidity, Business, Knowledge

“Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
Last night I felt
Real arms around me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
So, tell me how long
Before the last one?
And tell me how long
Before the right one?
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
Oh, goes on
And on
Oh, goes on
And on”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the 1987 song "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me"
From songs

Love, Hope, Falseness, Night

“To nominate yourself as the hero of your own story is to step outside society, not with the intention of turning your back on it but with the intention of not allowing it to dictate to you.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 66

“Have you heard about the kid who lost his head at Six Flags? The first time I read it, I thought, "Oh my God…How can I make this funny for everybody?"…Here goes. What happened was, he was in a church youth group and he lost his hat during the roller coaster. Afterwards, he was like, "I'm going to go get my hat." And there was a big fence with signs that said, "Hey, cut your losses." And he was like, "What? Have you SEEN me in that hat? Not today, fence!" So, he climbed that fence, and then there was another fence with a sign that probably said, "Hey, come on, knock it off." He was like, "You can't tell me how to live, signs!" And he climbed over that fence and there, the story ends. Did he get the hat? I'd like to think he did. That small silver lining, "Hey, I got my hat!"”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Then whack, right then! And I know he was on a church youth group and they don't believe in evolution, but that kid was going to get picked off sooner or later.
Happy Thoughts (2011)

God, Youth, Thinking, Loss

“Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 361

Truth

“If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

Profiles In Black http://www.theblackmarket.com/ProfilesInBlack/WCHandy.htm

Dreams

“The major difference between Astaire and Kelly is a difference, not of talent or technique, but of levels of sophistication. On the face of it, Kelly looks the more sophisticated. Where Kelly has ideas, Astaire has dance steps. Where Kelly has smartly tailored, dramatically apt Comden and Green scripts, Astaire in the Thirties made do with formulas derived from nineteenth-century French Farce. But the Kelly film is no longer a dance film. It's a story film with dances, as distinguished from a dance film with a story. When Fred and Ginger go into their dance, you see it as a distinct formal entity, even if it's been elaborately built up to in the script. In a Kelly film, the plot action and the musical set pieces preserve a smooth community of high spirits, so that the pressure in a dance number will often seem too low, the dance itself plebeian or folksy in order to "match up" with the rest of the picture.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Arlene Croce, in Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, W.H. Allen, London, 1974. p. 7. ISBN 0491001592.

Music, Communication, Idea, Dance

“Sir John Mandeville [was] an encyclopedist whose mostly invented stories still ring true, thanks to his gift for writing the first realistic Western fiction since Petronius. We do not know who this man was or even what language he wrote in, but modern textual analysis suggests that he rarely left his study. Rather than travel, he scavenged and plagiarized the works of others, improving their prose as he claimed their discoveries. In a period of continental isolation, Mandeville satisfied Europe's appetite for news by making up an East that sounded real. In expanding editions and translations, his Voyages and Travels became the most popular prose book of the Middle Ages.”

John Mandeville (1300–1372) writer

Michael Wolfe One Thousand Roads to Mecca (New York: Grove Press, 1999) p. 75.
Criticism

Books, Age, Travel, Study

“I'll tell you a wonderful story. Coming with all of these ideas that I had, and still have, and still feel because I never change and still believe in the same things. Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a luncheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, ‘Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do,' and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table.”

Luise Rainer (1910–2014) German-born Austrian and American film actress

Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

Feeling, Idea, Change

“Before 1914 had well begun to make the world safe for hypocrisy, these stories had blended into one continuous and fairly long Comedy of Evasion, called then In the Flesh, but a little later rechristened The Cream of The Jest…”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

World

“Soros and the Tides Foundation have been trying to indoctrinate our kids. Do you remember that stupid— what was the name of that film that they did? [clip comes up on monitor] There it is, The Story of Stuff.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2010-09-28
Beck: "Soros and the Tides Foundation have been trying to indoctrinate our kids"
2010-09-28
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009280044
2010s, 2010

Stupidity

“I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justifies another, but the public in judging a case like mine should remember that the darkest life may have a bright side, and that after the worst has been said against a man, he may, if he is heard, tell a story in his own rough way that will perhaps lead them to intimate the harshness of their thoughts against him, and find as many excuses for his as he would plead for himself.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Statements to the press (1880)

Life, Way

“Always the fact remains that to the mentally indolent this book may well seem a volume of disconnected short stories. All of us being more or less mentally indolent, this possibility constitutes a dire fault.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

Books

“It's an adventure story. But it's definitely not in our world.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview about The Dark Crystal (1982)

World

“As far as transience is concerned... You see the whole story in those shoes, that's why I paint them so accurate. The physical attitude; crooked legs, a lump. Those shoes were talking to me, and then I thought: I can see that you were so and so big, but did you also had a wife? Children? What were you doing? And what really mattered to me is my own place between them. Between those stories, that mystery. That pitch-black background [in Jopie's paintings, till c.1979-80] - I had found it. A cry for attention. Those pants, that shirt, that background, that was: here I am. But then it become mannerism. So I carried on realistically but avoiding the black background at all costs. It is as Rutger Kopland says: Whoever found it did not look well. Now I want to paint people like this, like they are made of colored mud. Color spiritualizes.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Wat de vergankelijkheid betreft.. .Je ziet het hele verhaal in die schoenen, daarom schilder ik ze zo scherp. De lichamelijke houding; kromme poten, een knobbel. Die schoenen praatten tegen me, en dan dacht ik: ik kan zien dat je zo en zo groot was, maar had je ook een vrouw? Kinderen? Wat deed je? En waar het me in wezen dan om ging is mijn plekkie daartussen. Tussen die verhalen, dat mysterie. Die pikzwarte achtergrond [in zijn schilderijen, tot c. 1979-80]; ik had het gevonden. Een schreeuw om aandacht. Die broek, dat hemd, die achtergrond, dat was: hier ben ik. Maar dan word je een maniërist. Dus ik ben realistisch doorgegaan, maar koste wat het kost die zwarte achtergrond vermijdend. Het is zoals nl:Rutger Kopland zegt: Wie het gevonden heeft, heeft niet goed gezocht. Nu wil ik de mensen zo schilderen, als zijn ze van gekleurde modder. De kleur die vergeestelijkt.
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

Children, People, Color, Shoe

“The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Miles Standish

Life, Money, Time

“The story is also a sequence of moral and surrealist aesthetic. The sexual instinct and the sense of death form its substance.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

The golden age
Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

Death, Age, Sense

“I came into DreamWorks looking to direct. I was hoping to go through story as a way toward directing, because that’s how it worked at Disney, story people became heads of story, and heads of story became directors. And they said, ‘Right now we don’t have a lot of story, but we have visual development,’ and I said, ‘Good, I paint!”

Vicky Jenson (1960) American animator

Quoted by Michael Mallory in " Firsts Among Equals http://www.animationmagazine.net/top-stories/firsts-among-equals/", Animation Magazine (March 6th, 2014).

People, Hope, Way, Painting

“My children's books are written on the belief that every child has a talent and a passion. Each story unfolds into an adventure of nurturing that confidence until a passion blooms.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On her purpose behind her books http://tolucantimes.info/section/inside-this-issue/young-author-makes-her-mark-in-the-world-of-children’s-literature/

Children, Books, Confidence, Passion

“Many of the Greek journalists and TV presenters also seem to share this "progressive intellectualism" which leads Greeks to having to apologize for being Orthodox- What a load of rubbish! Prof Yiannaras with whom I have corresponded then continues with the frightening story about 'the predicted and inevitable and desirable Latinization of our Greek alphabet" quoted by an anonymous source in a periodical Samizdat. Let's get this straight both Greece as well as the Balkan countries that have Kyrilic alphabets should fiercely resist Latinization.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Objection to Latinization
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Quotes, Country

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005. This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act. Ring of Honor

Love, Life, Hate, People

“To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 4 (pp. 190-191).

“For this manifestation to be as forceful as it possibly can, we have to work to find solidarity in each other’s stories, as differing as their inciting perspectives may be. The patriarchy sands out the edges of our rightful infuriation, making it harder to see in any light but our own. This blindness is part of what denies us community-forming solidarity and part of what has allowed widespread sexual assault and harassment to continue for so long. The sinister idea that there is a limit to the total number of accusations of "sexism" that society will bear has made us trend toward the egotistical in our understanding of oppression, but it is happening to all of us, and it is happening all of the time.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Communication, Idea, Understanding, Light

“The next phase of the work was when Joseph LeDoux and I came up with the idea of the interpreter. Twenty-five years into studying these patients we finally got around to asking the patients, "Why did you do that?" after they had a response with the left hand that was being governed by the separated, silent, speechless right hemisphere. We began to understand that the left hemisphere "made up" a story as to why the patient did what he/she did, and in that moment we began to see the cardinal feature of the left hemisphere: the ability to interpret actions generated outside its realm of conscious awareness.”

Michael S. Gazzaniga (1939) American neuroscientist

Idea, Understanding, Study

“The Paradox of Our Time is one of many stories that has been forwarded around the internet and attributed to Carlin, but is actually by Bob Moorehead.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Don't Blame Me", Georgecarlin.com (official website), 2012-09-09 http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/dontblame.html, "snopes.com: The Paradox of Our Time", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp, Misattributed

Time

“Live Free or Die Hard may work better for an audience that doesn't know much about the series is than it will for Die Hard die hards, who will be wondering who that impersonator is and what he did with the real John McClane. The original Die Hard came out of nowhere to blitz the 1988 summer box office. The fourth installment arrives with a weight of expectations that Atlas would have trouble shouldering and, when the dust settles in September, it's unlikely that Live Free or Die Hard will be one of this year's big success stories.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=310 of Live Free or Die Hard (2007). Two-and-a-half star reviews

Success, Summer, Box

“The story of Ramachandra, as narrated in the Valmiki Ramayan and the Adhyatma Ramayan, after reinforcing and revitalizing it with the essence of whatever the Puranas, the Vedas, and other scriptures could give, I, Tulsidas, am writing for the delight of my own soul.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

In the invocation of his epic poetry of Ramacharitamanas. Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 91

Soul

“In the stories about life and death, the soul often floats above the goodbye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world. Eddie, it appeared, was not getting a second chance.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Life, Death, People, World

“For example, Monstuart Elphinstone, a Governor of Bombay, suggested in his Minute dated 14 May 1859: “Divide et Impera was the old Roman motto, and it should be our”. Given the circumstances, it would have been foolish of any imperialist power not to follow such a policy. But for achieving this aim there was no need for them to distort Indian history. British historians had just to reiterate what the Muslim chroniclers themselves had written about the “glorious achievements” of their kings and conquerors. Their stories needed no proof: they stood confirmed by the hundreds of vandalised medieval monuments. The mistake lay with the misjudgement of our Congress-culture Government and the so-called secularist and Stalinist historians. They chose to treat history as a handmaid of politics to please the Muslim minority. They instructed their text-book writers to eschew mention of unpalatable historical facts like destruction of temples and forced conversions by Muslims in history, language and social science. But perpetration of lies has proved counter-productive. It has encouraged Muslims to ask for proof as to when Babur or Aurangzeb broke this or that temple, knowing full well that such shrines were actually vandalised and razed.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 8

Books, History, Science

“In 1918 Hitler was in a military hospital blinded from a British poison gas attack. He was just a corporal, he had no family, a limited education, no friends, no connections, no political status, nothing. He decides that he will lead Germany in redressing the grievous wrongs that had been done to it after the First World War and straightening out some of the mistakes that were being made in German society. And fifteen years later he is Chancellor of Germany and he did what he said he was going to do. A wounded war veteran with nobody to help him, and he pulled it up just through his own willpower. That is an amazing story.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

The Fame of a Dead Man's deeds, 2001
2000s, 2001
Source: [Griffin, 2001, 68]

War, World, Education, Family

“The scientistic sociologist wishes people to feel that he is just as empirical and thoroughgoing as the natural scientist, and that his conclusions are based just as relentlessly on observed data. The desire to present this kind of façade accounts, one may suspect, for the many examples and the extensive use of statistical tables found in the works of some of them. It has been said of certain novelists that they create settings having such a wealth of realistic detail that the reader assumes that the plot which is to follow will be equally realistic, when this may be far from the case. What happens is that the novelist disarms the reader with the realism of his setting in order that he may “get away with murder” in his plot. The persuasiveness of the scene is thus counted on to spill over into the action of the story. In like manner, when a treatise on social science is filled with this kind of data, the realism of the latter can influence our acceptance of the thesis, which may, on scrutiny, rest on very dubious constructs, such as definitions of units. Along with this there is sometimes a great display of scientific preciseness in formulations. But my reading suggests that some of these writers are often very precise about matters which are not very important and rather imprecise about matters which are. Most likely this is an offsetting process. If there are subjects one cannot afford to be precise about because they are too little understood or because one’s views of them are too contrary to traditional beliefs about society, one may be able to maintain an appearance of scientific correctness by taking great pains in the expressing of matters of little consequence. These will afford scope for a display of scholarly meticulousness and of one’s command of the scientific terminology.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Concealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology,” pp. 148-149.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Pain, People, Feeling, Nature

“When I came to faith, I thought I would have to stop being an actor, because it’s all about artifice and manipulation. But we’re living in a world where God doesn’t really have an influence, unless it’s fundamentalists, so I’ll always be an outsider because of my faith. And when you think about it, faith and acting are all about stories, so the two are not mutually exclusive.”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About being a Christian
From an interview with the Sunday Times, "The eyebrows have it."

God, World, Faith, Thinking

“Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

His Own Epitaph, written the night before his execution (1618) and found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tnk8RpOFWw "Even Such is Time" — Choir of Salisbury Cathedral

God, Youth, Age, Way

“Leiderman thought it was not enough that the government dropped charges. He wanted the criminal justice system to recognize Gonzalez’s innocence affirmatively. There is such a thing as a declaration of factual innocence, he explained to Gonzalez. A judge can grant it. It is exceedingly rare – so rare that many cops and lawyers go a career without seeing one. It means not just that prosecutors couldn’t make a case against you, but that you didn’t do the crime. The case remained on the docket of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy, who had earlier ordered Gonzalez held without bail. Leiderman petitioned the judge, trying not to get his client’s hopes up. He laid out the case, pointing out the holes in West’s story and the numerous alibi witnesses. Prosecutors did not want Gonzalez declared innocent. They knew a jury wouldn’t convict him but said they couldn’t be positive of his innocence. [ ] Ventura County’s chief assistant district attorney, later explained their reasoning: The attack West described was “improbable, but it wasn’t physically impossible.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

In January 2009, nearly a year after Gonzalez’s arrest, Leiderman called him excitedly: The judge had sided with them. Gonzalez was soon holding a certified copy of the judge’s order declaring him factually innocent.
As stated in, A Man Falsely Accused of Rape and Kidnap. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-5/

Justice, Hope

“Well, I'll tell you a story but you won't listen
It's about a nightmare steeped in tradition
It's the story of a coked-up pansy
Who spends his nights in flights of fancy

Met two fellas over gin and mixers
They talked for a while, he soon got the picture
One was a souped up Soho mincer
And the other was a pikey with a knowledge of scripture”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"La Belle et la Bete"
Lyrics and poetry

Knowledge, Night

“The complaint of the French artist against the Norman, is the "mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into stories of equal height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, artists already struggled over the best solution to this peculiarly American problem of the twentieth century, and when tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-story towers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or the French plan has won; but this at least will be sure in advance:— the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the beauties and more or less fits the facts to suit them.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mesquin: paltry, unimaginative, prosaic
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Beauty, Problem

“Our national story has its full share of grief and pain as well as triumph and expectation. But through it all, hope remains and dreams do not die.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Third Session of Parliament (June 30, 2007)

Pain, Dreams, Hope

“Historically, "public administration" has grown in large part out of the wider field of inquiry, "political science." The history of American political science during the past fifty years is a story much too lengthy to be told here, but some important general characteristics and tendencies it has communicated to or shared with public administration must be noted.
The Secular Spirit Despite: the fact that "political science" in such forms as moral philosophy and political economy had been taught in America long before the Civil War, the present curriculum, practically in its entirety, is the product of the secular, practical, empirical, and "scientific" tendencies of the past sixty or seventy years. American students dismayed at the inadequacies of the ethical approach in the Gilded Age, stimulated by their pilgrimage to German universities, and led by such figures as J. W. Burgess, E. J. James, A. B. Hart, A. L. Lowell, and F. J. Goodnow have sought to recreate political science as a true science. To this end they set about observing and analyzing "actual government." At various times and according to circumstances, they have turned to public law, foreign institutions, rural, municipal, state, and federal institutions, political parties, public opinion and pressures, and to the administrative process, in the search for the "stuff" of government. They have borrowed both ideas and examples from the natural sciences and the other social disciplines. Frequently they have been inspired by a belief that a Science of Politics will emerge when enough facts of the proper kinds are accumulated and put in the proper juxtaposition, a Science that will enable man to "predict and control" his political life. So far did they advance from the old belief that the problem of good government is the problem of moral men that they arrived at the opposite position: that morality is irrelevant, that proper institutions and expert personnel are determining.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 22-23

Life, Men, War, Age

“Dad joined the US Army by this point [1964], and initially he was stationed in Texas and then South Carolina. But the Vietnam war brought our normal life to an end. Once again, Dad was gone. Communications were very basic back then: Dad couldn't just pick up a cellphone and let us know he was okay. Months would go by without a letter or anything. Eventually he bought two tape recorders -- one he kept with him and one for our house. Dad used to talk into the recorder and send the tapes home. Then we would gather round our machine and tell Dad stories. And I would sing. I still have all the tapes, but I can't listen to them. It hurts too much. After Dad came back from Nam, he wasn't well. He'd been poisoned by Agent Orange and needed quite a lot of looking after. Mum was busy trying to get her Cuban qualifications revalidated by a US university, so I had to take care of Dad and my little sister [Becky]. It was tough. Toward the end, Dad was too far gone and he didn't really know what was hapening around him. I joined Miami Sound Machine in 1975 and we were getting quite successful, but Dad didn't even know who I was. He had to be moved to the hospital. On my wedding day in 1978 [September 2] I went to visit him, still wearing my wedding dress. That was the last time that he said my name. Dad died in 1980, but he touches my life every day. On my last album [Unwrapped] I did a lot of writing while I was looking at a picture of him in his younger days -- so happy and in the prime of his life. I'm not sure if he sees me, but I can feel him all around me. I hope he knows that I am so very proud of him.”

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

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, War, Happiness, Hope

“The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be, it was how you got a productive economy.
But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power, but of story. If their employees came home with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing.
The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story…had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure?”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Erasmas theorizing why others are joining his journey, Part 7, "Feral"
Anathem (2008)

Money, People, Religion, Feeling

“It just seems like the most successful, iconic love stories are not so easy or escapist. I think the ones that stay with us and resonate are full of conflict, discord and misunderstandings 'cause that's what makes drama happen or tension even if it's a comedy. I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them, get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite, it's really true. It takes confidence and courage to know that and then commit to it.”

Claire Danes (1979) American actress

"Interview: Steve Martin and Claire Danes" by Jeff Otto at IGN.com (19 October 2005) http://movies.ign.com/articles/659/659752p1.html

Love, Money, People, Confidence

“To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Isn't it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what's fit to be passed and what isn't, is the man most likely to become debauched? Did you hear any speaker of the opposition to this motion – eloquent as one of them was – to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you? Relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up, do you know anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=9m19s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Reading

“Whenever the circus would come to town, I would tell Ethan all kinds of kinky clown domination stories involving the leather clown, like the time she forced me to have sex with her in the little car, or the time she kept spraying me with the seltzer bottle until I obeyed her every command. Ethan and I would laugh and laugh at these tall tales, but I could tell deep down, he was wondering whether the leather clown was really real or not. And I would let him wonder.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"Leather Clown"
Lyrics, They (1988)

Sex, Cars, Time

“Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Knowledge, Tree, Evil

“I represent Anglin in this suit. I realize that Anglin’s story is full of controversy, hate, and nationalistic views, which he reportedly spread among his followers. However, the court may be on the verge of creating a dangerous precedent when deciding this lawsuit.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Hate

“The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn’t most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness – and good people – sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, chapter 3.
The Sunday Philosophy Club series

People, Evil

“Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)

World, Intelligence

“This book is the story of a young man who came to America to make a living, and simply happened to do so in a profession which he helped to create.”

Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) industrial designer

Introduction
Never Leave Well Enough Alone (1951)

Books, Help

“The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, God, Family, Suffering

“It's all over," he said to Cooke. "You've got to come clean. The notes show us the story is wrong. We know it. We can show you point by point how you concocted it.”

Bob Woodward (1943) American journalist

Post Reporter's Pulitzer Prize Is Withdrawn; Pulitzer Board Withdraws Post Reporter's Prize (19 April 1981)

Cooking

“I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Books

“I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Tales of a Traveler http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13514, To the Reader http://books.google.com/books?id=6R0GAAAAQAAJ&q=%22I+am+always+at+a+loss+to+know+how+much+to+believe+of+my+own+stories%22&pg=PR13#v=onepage (1824).

Loss

“Snake predation was no joke. It shaped our evolutionary past. We're attuned to snakes. We are really good at detecting the camouflage pattern of snakes in the lower half of our visual field. There's evidence that the reason human beings have such acute vision, which means that our eyes were opened, is because we co-evolved with snakes and we learned how to see them. And then the price we paid for seeing was that our brain grew, because you need a lot of brainpower to see. And the consequence of our brain growing was that one day we woke up and discovered the future. And the future is where all the snakes might live, instead of where they live right now. I already made the case that there's a tight link between what you eat and information - conceptual link as well as a practical link. But it's also the case that we can see colors. The question is: why? The answer is: we evolved to see ripe fruit. In the story of Adam and Eve human beings are given vision by the snake and the fruit. That turns out to be correct.”

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

Concepts

Color, Question, Learning, Past

“I've never had the impertinence to be sorry for Helen Keller. I'd as soon be sorry for Niagara Falls. But now as I bring the story up to date, I'm shriveled with shame when I recall that at times in my life — my easy life — I've actually been sorry for myself. You too? We've got our nerve, haven't we?”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

Radio Memorial http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?Documentid=968 for Anne Sullivan Macy (1936).

Life, Time

“The tale survives of two men
Who fell in love "at first sight";
Who shared everything
In unbounded intimacy
Including the pillow
And the red embroidered coverlet
Which had been in the family
For generations.
Whether they had bad days,
Domestic arguments
Or inappropriate dreams
We do not know –
No doubt such burrs
Were worked away by time
Polishing its story;
How they found each other
And lived together all their lives,
And died on the same day,
And were buried by the grieving town
On Mount Luofo's peak
With their pillow and red coverlet;
And a pine tree grew
Out of the grave
Like the character for longevity
And true love.Such is the legend.
I like to think of them,
Pan Zhang and Wang Zhangxian,
In the crowd of well-wishers
Waiting in the April sunshine,
Yes, under white cherry trees
In full bloom, for us
Here and now, on this day
Early in the century,
In our very best suits and ties,
With our new rings
Growing warm on our fingers
Like keepsakes of light
Saved from the stars.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

From the Song Dynasty

Love, Men, Family, Dreams

“If 60 Minutes will not do a story on me, it's their problem not mine. I'm changing the world; they're just reporting on it.”

Dov Charney (1969) Canadian-born U.S. based fashion designer/businessman

PR Week (2002)

World, Problem, Change

“Little Archie’s story is darker, more desperate, and yet drearily familiar.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Bone House (2011), p. 115

“A single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach. A story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal possible.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Describing the Allied assault on the Nijmegen bridge during Operation Market Garden in 1944

Men, Courage

“Moral of the story: Make offers.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

“The movie is an exhausted retread of the old campus romance gag where the pretty girl almost believes the lies of the reprehensible schemer, instead of trusting the nice guy who loves her. The only originality the movie brings to this formula is to make it incomprehensible, through the lurching incompetence of its story structure. Details are labored while the big picture remains unpainted… I was appalled by the poverty of its imagination.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/slackers-2002 of Slackers (1 February 2002) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Love, Guy, Imagination, Girl

“It’s a thing of beauty, the ability to spin the cloth of reality, and you’re a sucker for it: Isn’t story-telling what being human is all about?”

Charles Stross book Halting State

Source: Halting State (2007), Chapter 13, “Jack: In Hell” (p. 96)

Beauty, Reality, Clothes

“As project chief you are creating a narrative, a story, a good yarn. If you look at the process-journey that way, you and your gang will … dramatically up the odds of a WOW outcome!”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

November 5, 2010.
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Way

“Are we not bold to bid a god repent;
To break upon his slumbers with our prayers;
To watch him day and night; to wear him out
With endless supplication? Perhaps to beg
His kind attention to a pleasant tale;
To cheat him into pity, and conclude
Each story with Prometheus?”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

God, Cheating, Night

“[about a clerk, after recounting a story he read in which someone presented a store cashier with a million dollar bill and asked for change]
She goes "I'll bet it was a counterfeit million dollar bill."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Kinda like your high school diploma, huh?
Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

School, Change, Reading

“So vast has been the change in the claim and position of slavery! So entirely has it reversed the classic story, and the blind, begging Belisarius has become the imperial general! So proudly, in such long and dazzling and magnificent array, stands Xerxes at the fiery pass of war! And where is Leonidas? Where is liberty?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

War, Change

“The result is a horrible mess of a movie, without shape, trajectory or purpose — a one joke movie, if it had one joke. The two characters wander witlessly past the bizarre backdrops of Las Vegas (some real, some hallucinated, all interchangeable) while zonked out of their minds. Humor depends on attitude. Beyond a certain point, you don't have an attitude, you simply inhabit a state. I've heard a lot of funny jokes about drunks and druggies, but these guys are stoned beyond comprehension, to the point where most of their dialog could be paraphrased as "eh?"… As for Depp, what was he thinking he made this movie? He was once in trouble for trashing a New York hotel room, just like the heroes of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What was that? Research? After River Phoenix died of an overdose outside Depp's club, you wouldn't think Depp would see much humor in this story — but then, of course, there *isn't* much humor in this story.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-1998 of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (22 May 1998) Reviews, One-star reviews

Fear, Guy, Thinking, Past

“Home is my sanctuary; once inside, anything that happened outside is already forgotten. To be able to play with my twins and read stories to them is always a pleasure, especially when they amaze me with their new found words or phrases. Kids are amazing spirit boosters!”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Pamsy Tioseco, "Fit and Fabulous", Woman Today 01 October 2010, p. 54.
2010

Pleasure, Home, Reading

“I wish I didn't have to introduce the following information, [on reptilian shapeshifting] because it complicates the story and opens me up to mass ridicule. But I'm not afraid to go where information leads me”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

The Biggest Secret, ch. 2

“An illustrator in my own mind — and this is not a truth of any kind — is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that’s what you hold on to, and that’s what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)

Love, Truth, Books, Thinking

“I believe there are hundreds and thousands of stories just waiting to be written by organizations and companies who have leaders that inspire people to accomplish things that seem impossible. The only way that can happen, though, is if the leader believes it is possible—has even a mustard seed of faith—and can convince his people that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 106. On Leading Well

People, Faith, Way, Waiting

“The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst—for me, at least—is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.”

Stephen King book Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993), Introduction

Happiness, Books, Fear, Faith

“And so I have conceived that the news, properly presented, should be a sort of cross-section of the character of current human experience. It should delineate character, quality, tendencies and implications. In this way the reporter exercises his genius. Out of the current events he does not make a drab and sordid story, but rather an informing and enlightened epic. His work becomes no longer imitative, but rises to an original art.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Art, Way, Exercises

“The writer doesn’t push story into us, he withholds information in order that we draw his story out of ourselves.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

The Story Book (2010)

Drawing

“If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent and resourceful children, and you might expect that they would do very well at school. Don't. For the Baudelaires, school turns out to be another miserable episode in their unlucky lives.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Children, School, Intelligence, Time

“The fundamental principle of literature is to create something out of nothing and to make up stories. My creation has not been altogether fashioned out of nothing, and is not entirely made up.”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter Four, Section V

Literature, Fashion

“She was married for seven years
to a concrete castle king.
She said she wanted to learn to play the guitar
and to hear her children sing.
So I'd show up about once a week
in my faded tight-legged jeans
with a backlog full of hobo stories
and dilapidated dreams.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wanna Learn a Love Song
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Children, Dreams, Learning, Singing

“I can tell you I wrote every single word in this [her first children's] book -- in English and Spanish. I've been writing poetry and stories since I was a kid. And I am a songwriter. But you have limitations when you are a songwriter.... It was really a luxury to have 31 pages to expound upon.”

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

The Chicago Tribune (October 16, 2005)
2007, 2008

Children, Books

“I took a Greyhound bus to New York and stayed at the YMCA, fifty cents a night. I took my stories around to a dozen publishers. Nobody wanted them. They said, We don’t publish stories. Nobody reads them. Don’t you have a novel?”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Reading, Night

“The account of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the manuscripts are inaccurately designated, and of the half a century of intense research that followed, is in itself a fascinating as well as an exasperating story.”

Géza Vermès (1924–2013) British scholar

Introduction, p. 1
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English

Sea, Dead

“But let us not speak anymore of books and theories on paper. Now then, did you see my exhibition? As you may remember, 1 gathered in 'Cahiers d'Art' ten very recent paintings, twenty-five gouaches and watercolors, also recent, and twenty-eight drawings that span the period from 1910-1934. In the majority of the compositions on canvas I used a sand technique more or less consistently.... but I usually don't distinguish between traditional oil painting, gouache, tempera and watercolor, and I even simultaneously use the various techniques in the same work. What is essential for me is to be able to clearly convey what I want, to recount my dream. / consider both technique and form to be mere instruments of expression, and my stories, furthermore, are not narrative or historical in character, but purely pictorial.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

From an interview, 28 July 1935, in the Italian daily newspaper 'Lavoro fascista'; as quoted in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 30
1930 - 1944

Books, Dreams, Drawing, Painting

“So from there on I made all their science fiction films, and the more I did of these films the more I liked it because the studio left me alone. No one at that time was an expert at making sf films so I claimed to be one. I wasn't, of course, but the studio didn't know that so they never argued with me, no matter what I did. In most of my sf films I tried to create an atmosphere because I think if you shoot an imaginative film--a film in which you ask an audience to believe things that are bizarre--you have to make them believe it. You can't do this with the story or actors alone, you have to create a kind of atmosphere while shooting it in which the audience's credibility will be suspended to the point where they don't say to themselves: "That's impossible!"”

Jack Arnold (director)

Jack Arnold in The Horror People http://eric.b.olsen.tripod.com/arnold.html (1976)

Imagination, Thinking, Science, Time

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal (sic) which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 292)

Life, Behavior, Universe, Evil

“Stephen Jay Gould is extremely bright, inventive. He thoroughly understands paleontology; he thoroughly understands evolutionary biology. He has performed an enormous service in getting people to think about punctuated equilibrium, because you see the process of stasis/sudden change, which is a puzzle. It's the cessation of change for long periods of time. Since you always have mutations, why don't things continue changing? You either have to say that the particular form is highly adapted, optimal, and exists in a stable environment, or you have to be very puzzled. Steve has been enormously important in that sense. Talking with Steve, or listening to him give a talk, is a bit like playing tennis with someone who's better than you are. It makes you play a better game than you can play. For years, Steve has wanted to find, in effect, what accounts for the order in biology, without having to appeal to selection to explain everything—that is, to the evolutionary "just-so stories." You can come up with some cockamamie account about why anything you look at was formed in evolution because it was useful for something. There is no way of checking such things. We're natural allies, because I'm trying to find sources of that natural order without appealing to selection, and yet we all know that selection is important.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

Kauffman in: John Brockman, ed. (1995) The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, p. 64-65. ( online http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/i-Ch.2.html)

People, Way, Game, Optimism

“My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories… They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

KTTunstall.com

Personality

“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67.

War

“So the two of them went to London by the early morning train. 'Let's surprise her,' said Nigel, but Cedric telephoned first, wryly remembering the story of the pedantic adulterer - 'My dear, it is I who am surprised; you are astounded.”

Evelyn Waugh book Put Out More Flags

Source: Put Out More Flags (1942), Ch. 3 : Spring

Training

“While I agree that the film is historical, and the logo also, apparently, because of the film it is a part of, I disagree that as creative individuals there need be quite so much analyzing and in such disturbingly personal criticism about me as an individual for my having shared my experiences about my design of this logo. It’s needless by others, makes no contribution to the information and, instead, detracts from the genuine story I’ve related about this bit of film history.”

Suzy Rice graphic designer

The “Star Wars” Logo Design http://suzyrice.com/the-star-wars-logo-design-page-one-of-two/ (October 28, 2011)

History, Parting, Personality

“There is no doubt of the need for an up-to-date, balanced, and comprehensive work on the history of atomism, drawing ideas, mathematics, and experiment together into a single story. When available, it should become required reading for all students of the exact sciences.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

History, Mathematics, Idea, Science

“The story of The Libertines starts for me when it was me, Carl Barât and Steve Bedlow sat on the side of a canal, throwing stones at a bottle and we had a game where whoever hit the bottle first with the stone got to choose the name of the band - I can't even remember who it was that hit the bottle but, yeah, from that night onwards we became The Libertines. We ended up throwing ourselves into eternity, as we called it at the time”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

On how The Libertines got their name
Definitions and objects

Game, Time, Night

“You know how a boy is. There comes a time for departure, a point where he sees confirmed the suspicion he’d had for some time that his father is not a god, not even a oracle. He sees that he no longer has any right to any such father. So Vheissu becomes a bedtime story or fairly tale after all, and the boy a superior version of his merely human father.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Seven, Part VII

God, Boy, Departure, Time

“The history of English poetry in verse in the story of the exhaustion of the effects to be obtained from rhyme and meter of the exploitation of a mine in which the most lodes have at last given out.”

F. S. Flint (1885–1960) English Imagist poet

Otherworld Cadences (1920)

History

“Now, gentlemen, there will be a beautiful story: what is the role, in the overall scheme of creation, of some of these little beings who are the agents of fermentation, the agents of putrefaction, of disorganization of everything that life has had in the surface of the globe. This role is immense, marvelous, really moving. Maybe one day maybe I will be given [the opportunity] to explain here some of these results. May God grant it to be still in the presence of such a brilliant assembly!”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original in French: Maintenant, messieurs, il y aurait un beau sujet à traiter : c’est celui du rôle, dans l’économie générale de la création, de quelques-uns de ces petits êtres qui sont les agents de la fermentation, les agents de la putréfaction, de la désorganisation de tout ce qui a eu vie il la surface du globe. Ce rôle est immense, merveilleux, vraiment émouvant. Un jour peut-être me sera-t-il donné de vous exposer ici quelques-uns de ces résultats. Dieu veuille que ce soit encore en présence à une aussi brillante assemblée!
Soirées scientifiques de la Sorbonne (1864)

Life, God, Beauty

“I was very fond of strange stories when I was a child. In my village-school days, I used to buy stealthily the popular novels and historical recitals. Fearing that my father and my teacher might punish me for this and rob me of these treasures, I carefully hid them in secret places where I could enjoy them unmolested. As I grew older, my love for strange stories became even stronger, and I learned of things stranger than what I had read in my childhood. When I was in my thirties my memory was full of these stories accumulated through years of eager seeking. […] I have sometimes laughingly said to myself that it is not I who have found these ghosts and monsters, but they, the monstrosities themselves, which have found me!”

Wú Chéng'ēn (1500–1582) Chinese writer

Preface to a collection of short stories about monsters, now lost, as quoted in Arthur Waley's introduction to the American edition of Monkey (New York: Grove Press, 1943)

Love, Secret, Fear, School

Quotes about story page 27

Quotes about story
page 27