Contemporary Quotes - Page 13

I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

Robert Ashley

Theatre, Would Be, Television

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We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on!

Nicky Cruz

Christian, Prayer, Home

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Be contemporary. Have impact. Strive for it. Be of the world. Move it. Be bold, don’t hold back. Then the moment you think you’ve been bold, be bolder. We are all alive today, ever so briefly here now, not then, not ago, not in some dreamworld of a hypothetical future. Whatever you do, you must make it contemporary. Make it matter now. You must give us a new path to tread, even if it carries the footfalls of old soles. You must not be immune to the weird urgency of today.

Ian Bogost

Moving, Thinking, Impact

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If Murakami's novels are grand enigmas, his stories are bite-sized conundrums. (...) The great pleasure of the new story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is watching Murakami come at his obsessions from so many different angles. There's a panoply of strangeness between these covers (.....) This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us.

Antoine Wilson

Sleep, Age, Different

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Arnošt Lustig is one of the leading contemporary Czech fiction writers, and certainly the most important Jewish writer of Bohemia to have survived the Holocaust.

Josef Skvorecky

Holocaust, Important, Fiction

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A brilliant inquiry into the contemporary Iranian predicament and what it means for the world. At a time when all too many of our leading thinkers are mired in the weeds of provincialism and narrow ideological wars, Postel has written a work of grace, intelligence, and towering integrity. Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Tehran is nothing less than a masterpiece of moral and political criticism.

Afshin Molavi

Weed, War, Integrity

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Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror

Alasdair MacIntyre

Religious, Philosophy, Political

Alasdair MacIntyre (2007). “Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922”, p.4, Rowman & Littlefield

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The issue is Kinkade's ideology, and particularly his nostalgia; his paintings endlessly trumpet a nonexistent past when times were simpler and morality more pure. There's nothing wrong with this, but it stands at odds with a contemporary art world that looks to the future for inspiration. We value complexity and innovation, and distrust saccharine pictures of the past.

Paddy Johnson

Art, Inspiration, Past

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Brings [O'Brian's] achievement to a new height....Such is O'Brian's power to possess the imagination that I found I was living in his world as much as my own, wanting to know what happens next. That is the real test. Any contemporary novelist should recognize in Patrick O'Brian a Master of the Art.

Alan Judd

Art, Real, Imagination

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He had a stellar talent. I not only lost a contemporary in the death of Robert E. Howard. The world lost a writer of extraordinary gifts.

Murray Leinster

World, Talent, Lost

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Prose of the World is an enormously compelling and vivid study. The result is an ambitious, timely, and eloquent account of the relationship between early-twentieth-century fiction and the contemporary global novel in English.

Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Ambitious, Vivid, Fiction

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Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.

Jacob Needleman

Our World, Essence, Ideas

Jacob Needleman (2003). “The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders”, p.16, Penguin

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Poetry restores language by breaking it, and I think that much contemporary writing restores fantasy, as a genre of writing in contrast to a genre of commodity or a section in a bookstore, by breaking it. Michael Moorcock revived fantasy by prying it loose from morality; writers like Jeff VanderMeer, Stepan Chapman, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Nathan Ballingrud are doing the same by prying fantasy away from pedestrian writing, with more vibrant and daring styles, more reflective thinking, and a more widely broadcast spectrum of themes.

Michael Cisco

Writing, Thinking, Style

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American Morons is the work of an original. Like Hitchcock or Ramsey Campbell, the style is precise, alert, and well-mannered, inviting us to enter Hirshberg's private world so that he may lock the door behind us. If there is anyone in contemporary fiction worth watching, it is Glen Hirshberg.

Dennis Etchison

Doors, Contemporary Fiction, Style

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'Above The Thunder' is passionate, wise, and piercingly beautiful. Readers drawn to books with rich, memorable characters and contemporary stories will find this remarkable debut novel not only irresistible but impossible to put down.

Tony Ardizzone

Beautiful, Wise, Book

"'Above The Thunder' by Renee Manfredi", www.penguinrandomhouse.com. May 10, 2005.

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Audrey Auld is a great singer songwriter. She holds a unique place in contemporary Americana/Roots music. I believe that this uniqueness is largely due to the fact that she is Australian. This affords her a totally different attitude as an artist than traditional American contributors to this genre. Audrey is one of the most honest original artists I know.

Fred Eaglesmith

Attitude, Believe, Artist

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To Forget Venice is a tour de force of ventriloquism. Elegant, contemporary, and wry, the voice at its center is also capable of disarming flights of imagination as it enters and inhabits other lives across time and gender. The glittering, fetid city emerges as a complex metaphor for the human heart’s simultaneous tenderness and capacity for cruelty, its ‘silver glow / a local specialty: filth / disguised as ornament.’ This Venice is unforgettable.

Chase Twichell

Heart, Venice, Cities

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There is hardly an aspect of contemporary history more irritating and mystifying than the fact that of all the great unsolved political questions of our century, it should have been this seemingly small and unimportant Jewish problem that had the dubious honor of setting the whole infernal machine in motion.

Hannah

Should Have, Political, Honor

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History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.

Ken Loach

Thinking, Past, Issues

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All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

Heinrich Heine

Eyeglasses, Knowing, Lenses

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The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood - and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same action

Thomas Sowell

Block, Moving, People

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One of his officers, Henry Lee, summed up contemporary public opinion of Washington: First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

George Washington

Art, Peace, War

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All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

David Hockney

Art, Alive, Ifs

"David Hockney Keeps Seeking New Avenues of Exploration". Interview with Mark Feeney, archive.boston.com. February 26, 2006.

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A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it.

Dallas Willard

Christian, Spiritual, Lying

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This is why moral uneasiness is destined to become even more acute. It is obvious that a fundamental defect, or rather a series of defects, indeed a defective machinery is at the root of contemporary economics and materialistic civilization, which does not allow the human family to break free from such radically unjust situations.

Pope John Paul II

Roots, Civilization, Economic Inequality

Pope John Paul II (1996). “The Encyclicals of John Paul II”, Our Sunday Visitor (IN)

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