William Poundstone Quotes
Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.
William Poundstone
Quotes to Explore
Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
e. e. cummings
I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.
Yehuda Amichai
I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.
Ida B. Wells
Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.
R. D. Laing
Action set pieces are my absolute favorite thing to write. I'm pretty much always in the mood to do them, but music certainly helps the process. I usually brainstorm out the dynamics and choreography of a fight to music beforehand - it gives me the little sparks of imagination when I get to the gaps in my own creativity.
Victoria Aveyard
The Indians gave up the land of their own free will, and for it received brass kettles, blankets, guns, shirts, flints, tobacco, rum and many trinkets in which their simple hearts delighted.
Patrick Gordon
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
Salman Rushdie
I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
Eddie Marsan
I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
P. J. O'Rourke
'Now, boy, now...' he said bewilderedly, 'what is all this talk of glory? Have you caught the sickness, too? Curse me for a blind beggar, I should have seen. This fever has cankered even your simple heart, hasn’t it, Simon? I’m sorry. It takes a strong will or practiced eye to see through the glitter to the rotten core.'
Tad Williams
Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.
Jack Kerouac
His eyes measured the little chamber. How two people could survive in so small a space was as difficult to grasp as the conventions in contract bridge. Perhaps there was some simple key that would solve the problem, and he would have the subject of another book.
J. G. Ballard
Getting up at odd hours to catch flights. I hate the long hours of waiting. There are times when one is continuously travelling, from one city to another, hopping from one studio to another or changing from one costume to another. It is annoying, but after a point, one learns to be immune to one’s surroundings.
Rani Mukerji
At 23 years old, I came into politics as a dragon slayer. At 63 years old, I'm going out as a dragon.
Aaron Francis Broussard
The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.
Stanley Baldwin
Even a criminal has the right to a new life, but they made sure I did not have that. They just didn't stop calling me a prostitute for ever and ever and ever and ever.
Christine Keeler
I like smoking! I mean, God, I quit everything else, can't I smoke?
Melanie Griffith
Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.
William Poundstone