Edmond de Goncourt Quotes

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

Edmond de Goncourt

• Past
• Present
• Story

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Writing
  • School
  • Present

• The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • God
  • True
  • Human

• This basic thing I always do: 'What happened between the character's birth, and page one of the script?' Anything that's not in the story, I'll fill in the blanks.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • Character
  • Story
  • Birth

• Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.

  

  Ira Glass
  • Different
  • Story
  • Doing

• I don't like to travel as much as I have in the past, but it's good for my soul to get to pick, especially with these good musicians and these guys that play so well.

  

  Earl Scruggs
  • Good
  • Soul
  • Past

• You sit at your computer for hours, then slave away at your job that you may or may not like. You don't know how to explain to them that the time when you feel alive or present is when you are writing.

  

  Karen Bender
  • Time
  • Writing
  • May

• Present annual world energy consumption is about equal to the annihilation energy of 4 tons of matter.

  

  Barney Oliver
  • World
  • Energy
  • Present

• When 5150 came out rock was king. Post Nirvana and Pearl Jam 1996 is a different story.

  

  Gary Cherone Van Halen
  • Different
  • Rock
  • Story

• Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you.

  

  Ian Mcewan
  • People
  • God
  • Bad

• As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.

  

  J. C. Chandor
  • Always
  • Story
  • Weakness

• There's a physicality and confidence to Americans; they're very present. That's something I enjoy being around because it rubs off on you.

  

  Ioan Gruffudd
  • Present
  • Confidence
  • Enjoy

• The usefulness of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.

  

  Lane Kirkland
  • People
  • Present
  • Meeting

• Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.

  

  Kate Christensen
  • Think
  • Reading
  • Story

• The past is but the past of a beginning.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • Past
  • Beginning

• Elvis was just like a big old kid. It was like he never got past 19, I don't think, in a lotta ways.

  

  Mac Davis
  • Think
  • Past
  • Old

• The future is keeping you out of the present time.

  

  Van Morrison
  • Time
  • Future
  • Present

• When you come across someone colorful and vibrant maybe in the present it isn't so interesting, but, in the past, it sheds a wonderful light onto living life.

  

  Garrett Hedlund
  • Life
  • Past
  • Interesting

• In the not so distant past, we were close enough to our community to physically see how our actions impacted the group overall. Now it's just too easy to look the other way, or turn off the TV or computer and detach ourselves from the others.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Past
  • Community
  • Easy

• The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape.

  

  Jack Henry Abbott
  • Respect
  • Escape
  • Guards

• I get letters from women, and they say, 'I love your Roman nose.' If I weren't on TV and I walked past that same woman, she'd go, 'Did you see the beak on that guy?

  

  Matt Lauer
  • Women
  • She
  • Guy

• Immunity to obsolescence is the only obsolescent-immune conceit of the past millennium.

  

  Matt Mullenweg
  • Past

• I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to

  

  Edwidge Danticat
  • Women
  • Children
  • Past

• I try to get away from the pits as quickly as I can. I speak to my engineer when I get out of the car, usually there's some press to do, then I will go off and have a shower and get my dry, clean overalls and clothing on. I'll have a massage, stretch and something to eat. I don't sleep, but I try to close my eyes for a while.

  

  Allan McNish
  • Eyes
  • Sleep
  • Car

• Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

  

  Edmond de Goncourt
  • Past
  • Present
  • Story