Blank Quotes - Page 12

• The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?" -Pablo Picasso.

  Pablo Picasso

  Book, Mean, Long

  Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery (1975). “Picasso, Braque, Léger: masterpieces from Swiss collections”

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• The afrit batted his eyelashes with a ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?" "A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!" I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope never heard of you. Now if you'll just-

  Jonathan Stroud

  Men, Eyelashes, Names

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• To my everlasting relief, he’d also stopped with the starch a few years back . The military made him big on spray starch, but I point-blank refused to touch the stuff after a while. He finally gave up doing it himself, and I manfully restrained myself from pointing out that the world didn’t explode when he did. And they say maturity is just for adults.

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Military, Maturity, Years

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• Her eyes flicked over the cards, looked at Dimitri, then looked back at the cards. Her expression was blank. "You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can." She pointed to the Wheel of Fortune card. "The wheel is turning, always turning.

  Richelle Mead

  Eye, Expression, Treasure

  Richelle Mead (2013). “Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection”, p.476, Penguin

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• Cheeses crusty, got all musty, got damp on the stone of a peach,” I agreed. He looked blank, so I repeated it with proper emphasis. “ ChEEZ-zes crusty. Got Al -musty. Got DAMp on the StoneofapeaCH.

  Patricia Briggs

  Peaches, Stones, Als

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• The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.

  Frank Zappa

  Musical, Sound, Radio

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• A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look!

  Farid al-Din Attar

  Kings, Men, Grieving

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• Feminist,” he said, clearly amused. “Next you’ll be telling us you hate men.” She gave him a blank look. “I only hate stupid men who don’t actually understand what ‘feminist’ means.” He laughed. “You run into a lot of men like that?” “All the time.” “Really?” “Even as we speak, Nick.” “Oh no she didn’t,” said Peter. I groaned.

  Richelle Mead

  Running, Stupid, Hate

  Richelle Mead (2012). “Succubus Dreams”, p.100, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  People, Together, Cement

  Sarah Addison Allen (2010). “The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel”, p.113, Bantam

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• A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you're planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Baby, Character, Play

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• I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.

  Nora Roberts

  Writing, Pages, I Can

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• Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Girl, Hurt, Loving You

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• I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.

  Sylvia Plath

  Years, Overcoming, Done

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.307, Anchor

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• Like every girl, I only need to look up and a little to the right of me to see the hysteria that belongs to me, the one that hangs om a hook like an empty jacket and flutters with disappointment that I cannot wear her all the time. I call her my hysteric, and this personal hysteric of mine is designer made (though I'm not sure who made her), flattering and comfortable, attractive even, if you're around people who like that sort of thing. She is not anyone, my hysteric; she is blank, electricity dancing around a filament, singing to kill.

  Helen Oyeyemi

  Girl, Disappointment, Hysteria

  Helen Oyeyemi (2013). “The Opposite House”, p.29, A&C Black

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• The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, White, Space

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.57, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

  Georges Perec

  Space, Sea, Land

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• As I lay on my back in bed staring up at the blank, white ceiling the stillness seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt my eardrums would burst with it.

  Sylvia Plath

  White, Bed, Ceilings

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.18, Hamilton Books

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• White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.

  A. E. Housman

  Lying, Moon, Feet

  A. E. Housman (2017). “A Shropshire Lad”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

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• The religion of the atheist has a God-shaped blank at it's heart.

  H. G. Wells

  Atheist, Heart, Atheism

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• Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to versemaking, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject.

  Charles Darwin

  Teaching, Mean, School

  Charles Darwin (2016). “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.25, VM eBooks

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• Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mistake, Writing, Ignorance

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.17

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• The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.

  John Updike

  Sunday, Golf, Swings

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• Life is fired at us point blank.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Life, Life Is

  Jose Ortega y Gasset (2014). “Mission of the University”, p.51, Routledge

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• And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Book, Fate

  Mary Oliver (2016). “Upstream: Selected Essays”, p.17, Penguin

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• The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

  Francois Fenelon

  War, Book, Past

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