Variation Quotes - Page 8

• ...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.

  Jean Genet

  Book, Character, Tone

  Jean Genet, Bernard Frechtman (1994). “Funeral Rites”, p.97, Grove Press

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• I remember they did all the makeup tests on me for Darla... Sorry, for "the vampire." I was the test monkey for the vampire look, so I went through numerous variations of the prosthetics and camera tests before I actually got the job.

  Julie Benz

  Jobs, Sorry, Makeup

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

  Tori Amos

  Thinking, Theme, Dangerous

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• There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme

  Jacqueline Carey

  Patterns, Endless, Theme

  Jacqueline Carey (2011). “Kushiel's Chosen”, p.35, Pan Macmillan

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• How many black holes have we been up close and personal with?" Kosta countered. "All sorts of odd things happen near the event horizon, from huge tidal forces to variations in time. Personally, I'm voting on it having to do with gravity, either a polarization of the fields themselves or else something related to the time differential." I didn't know physics had become a democracy," Hanan murmered.

  Timothy Zahn

  Voting, Black, Democracy

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• To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

  John Steinbeck

  Honesty, Men, Soul

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.66, Penguin

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• Yes, Eden was beautiful- and if I had to squeeze through corporeal keyholes to crash it- so be it. (Hasn’t it bothered you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was I doing there? ‘Presume not the ways of God to scan,’ you’ve been told in umpteen variations, ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man.’ Maybe so, but what, excuse me, was the Devil doing in Eden?) I took the forms of animals. I found I could. (That’s generally my reason for doing something, by the way, because I find I can.)

  Glen Duncan

  Beautiful, Mean, Animal

  Glen Duncan (2007). “I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story”, p.22, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Past, Novelty, Tradition

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• Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

  Stef Penney

  Wall, Secret, Principles

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• My feeling is that a human being or any complex organism has a system of cognitive structures that develop much in the way the physical organs of the body develop. That is, in their fundamental character they are innate; their basic form is determined by the genetic structure of the organism. Of course, they grow under particular environmental conditions, assuming a specific form that admits of some variation. Much of what is distinctive among human beings is a specific manner in which a variety of shared cognitive structures develop.

  Noam Chomsky

  Character, Feelings, Environmental

  Source: chomsky.info

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• I am a great believer in variations on the routine.

  Kaye Gibbons

  Routine, Believer

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• You can't expect someone born into a family with no music...to understand when I'm conducting the Schönberg Variations.

  Daniel Barenboim

  Conducting, Born, Schoenberg

  "'Europe has to take the initiative now'". Interview with Luke Harding, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2004.

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• Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation.

  Seneca the Younger

  Nature, Pride, Doe

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• Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

  Franz Liszt

  Composer, Brahms, Mines

  "Remembering Franz Liszt" by Arthur Friedheim and Alexander Siloti, (p. 138), 1961.

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• It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

  Charles Darwin

  Opportunity, World, May

  Charles Darwin, Paul H. Barrett, Peter Gautrey (1989). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 15: On the Origin of Species, 1859”, p.62, NYU Press

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• Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relationship to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.

  Charles Darwin

  Struggle, Owing, Causes

  On the Origin of Species ch. 3 (1859)

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• In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, on 'The Simpsons,' for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I'm doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times, when I record with a group, I'll stay after class for another hour or two.

  Hank Azaria

  Class, Two, Focus

  "Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Hank Azaria and Common Talk HAPPY FEET TWO". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. November 15, 2011.

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• The [Five Second Rule] has many variations, including The Three Second Rule, The Seven Second Rule, and the extremely handy and versatile The However Long It Takes Me to Pick Up This Food Rule.

  Neil Pasricha

  Food, Long, Three

  Neil Pasricha (2010). “The Book of Awesome”, p.68, Penguin

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• A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

  Charles Darwin

  Law, Direct Action, Growth

  Charles Darwin, James T. Costa (2009). “The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species”, p.486, Harvard University Press

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• I suggest that what artists do in all media can be summarized as deliberately performing the operations that occur instinctively during a ritualized behaviour: they simplify or formalize, repeat (sometimes with variation), exaggerate, and elaborate in both space and time for the purpose of attracting attention and provoking and manipulating emotional response.

  Ellen Dissanayake

  Art, Emotional, Media

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• What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others

  William Saroyan

  Children, People, Special

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• I like to count myself as someone who doesn't follow that stuff and someone who's just trying to invent stories and characters and movies that are just funny and work because they're good and not because they're a slight variation that were hot a few months ago.

  Scot Armstrong

  Character, Trying, Hot

  Source: www.gq.com

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• I discovered that some things are written for us. It's not that we can't change our ancestral bearings, or that the path or purpose of any of our lives is really written in stone. But what tends to happen sometimes is the path is so deeply inscribed in the birth that it becomes you and every variation away from it brings you back in ways that you are not controlling.

  Maya Tiwari

  Stones, Way, Path

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Postulate 3. Assignable causes of variation may be found and eliminated.

  Walter A. Shewhart

  May, Causes, Found

  "Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product". Book by Walter A. Shewhart, p. 8, 1931.

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• I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Two, Silence, Feminist

  Theodore Dalrymple (2005). “Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses”, Ivan R Dee

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