Composition Quotes - Page 24

• Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Writing, Thinking, Creating

  Henry Ward Beecher, Edna Dean Proctor (1858). “Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher”, p.228

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• A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns or expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression; but words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Memories, Spring, Heart

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Essays and Reviews”, p.40

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• it may be said that children are but newly-issued editions of old compositions, re-bound and corrected, with fresh introductions, modern print and headpieces, but the text is that of former editions handed down from generation to generation.

  Anna Kingsford

  Children, Generations, May

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• I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.

  Joseph Addison

  Dream, Mistake, Believe

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1819). “The Spectator”, p.59

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• The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

  William Hazlitt

  Critics, Originals

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1498, Delphi Classics

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• A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.

  Joseph Joubert

  Essence, Ideas, Giving

  Joseph Joubert (1867). “Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert”, p.150

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• I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the yes. I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us.

  Richard Avedon

  Light, White, Narrative

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• I've got to get the ultimate in composition today. or I've got to get the ultimate in light, I'll stay here until it appears. I was not making any demands. I went purely to see what would come, what might be there. I didn't have to be archaeologist or historian or tourist, I just needed to be available.

  Paul Caponigro

  Light, Tourists, Demand

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• The golden rule is work fast. As for framing, composition, focus-this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes.

  Jacques-Henri Lartigue

  Focus, Intuition, Asking

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• As a fine artist I was drawn to composition and technique. I would count the cuts.

  Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

  Cutting, Artist, Technique

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• From the beginning. I was a poem-writing child. I wrote little novels in my composition book when I was eight, nine years old.

  Joan Larkin

  Children, Book, Writing

  "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. October 25, 2013.

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• Writing essays and teaching composition have helped me immensely in writing poetry, because they've forced me to focus on the structure of ideas.

  Aaron Belz

  Teaching, Writing, Ideas

  "Cartographer of Word Galaxies". Interview with Susan Lerner, logger.believermag.com. September 24, 2013.

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• My mother is a good woman - a very good woman - and I am, I think, not quite all criminality, but we do not pull together. I am a piece of machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way, setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.

  Miles Franklin

  Mother, Thinking, Wind

  Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.63, The Floating Press

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• The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.

  Lydia Davis

  Pain, Writing, Creating

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• How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Writing, Soul

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• I need geometry to set the grammar of the image expressive language . The structural skeleton, the composition and the geometric layout provide a perspective from which one can read the image; otherwise we would do what Dadaists did when they put words in a little bag and then took them out at random in order to compose a poem.

  Augusto De Luca

  Skeletons, Order, Perspective

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• The unfair composition of the Security Council is largely acknowledged. The principal defects are the anachronistic privileges of the five permanent members of the Council and the Council's insufficient representativeness.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  Privilege, Unfair, Members

  "Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order". August 07, 2013.

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• When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.

  Frances Trollope

  People, Grace, Newspapers

  Frances Trollope (2014). “Domestic Manners of the Americans”, p.208, Oxford University Press

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• That a viewer does not see what the artist intended does not make the composition a failure... In reality all artists speak first to themselves and then to an audience.

  Mike Svob

  Artist, Reality, Doe

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• Going back and forth between Western Arabic and African countries clearly created the various musical backgrounds I could have and obviously influenced my professional attitude, my way of approaching both music composition and singing, particularly phrasing.

  Rokia Traore

  Country, Attitude, Musical

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• I heard Joby Talbot's Hovercraft piece for orchestra and felt its immediate physical impact - visceral, unsettling, hungry and direct. These short five minutes became our keystone to unlocking a strangely seductive score that tensions the aggressive force of the White Stripes with the enigmatic beauty of Talbot's own compositions.

  Wayne McGregor

  White, Impact, Seductive

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• I was always self-taught, there was no-one to study with when I was doing composition.

  Richard Meale

  Self, Taught, Study

  "The Music Show" with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. August 24, 2002.

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• I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on. I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.

  Alexander Payne

  Brother, Thinking, Talking

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

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• Essentially, in photography, I think on two levels: one emotional and the other technical. The emotional impact has to do with looking for something dramatic happening in the photograph, something that reaches out and touches somebody in some way. And the technical is having to do with composition and framing - light and dark, light and shadow.

  Leonard Nimoy

  Photography, Dark, Emotional

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• In 1948 the first severe crash occurred in my life when Stalin put out his decree on formalism. There was a bulletin board in the Moscow Conservatory. They posted the decree, which said Shostakovichs compositions and Prokofievs were no longer to be played.

  Mstislav Rostropovich

  Boards, Moscow, Firsts

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