Convincing Quotes - Page 6

• There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin.

  Juliet Marillier

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• An argument frequently used by believers [is] to force unbelievers to soften their terms by accepting their opponents' definition; "Atheist" means without a concept of God that is logically convincing, not with proof that God does not exist.

  Jim Herrick

  Atheist, Mean, Doe

  Jim Herrick (1985). “Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists”

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• That’s the problem with fiction — or the charm, if you want. Even mediocre plots have a way of sinking their hooks into you, until you find yourself concerned for the fates of characters who aren’t even fully convincing.

  Charles McGrath

  Character, Fate, Finding Yourself

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• Though films become more daring sexually, they are probably less sexy than they ever were. There haven't been any convincing love scenes or romances in the movies in a while. (Nobody even seems to neck in theaters any more.) ... when the mechanics and sadism quotients go up, the movie love interest goes dead, and the film just lies there, giving a certain amount of offense.

  Renata Adler

  Movie, Sexy, Lying

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• One thing about beginning writers is that they don't really always know their own strengths and weaknesses - you might think you're bad at characterization, but that might really be because of some issue you're having with another element, which is making it hard for you to express character in a convincing way.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Character, Thinking, Issues

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• When I care about something, I care about something. I think I have an obligation as an American to - and as a citizen, as - as a human being, to help others. Smoking is going to kill a billion people this century. I've put six hundred million dollars from my own money into trying to stop the tobacco companies from getting kids to smoke and convincing adults that it's not in their health.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Kids, Helping Others, Thinking

  Interview with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. December 16, 2012.

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• Any talented decadent can make unreality believable. To make reality convincing is another matter, a matter for only the greatest masters.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Reality, Matter, Masters

  "Classics Revisited". Chapter: "Tolstoy: War and Peace", p. 192, 1968.

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• The standard of living has risen along with the size of the world's population since the beginning of recorded time. There is no convincing economic reason why these trends toward a better life should not continue indefinitely.

  Julian Simon

  Size, Reason Why, Population

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• Selling is never about convincing. It is always about helping.

  Mark Cuban

  Helping, Selling

  "The 6 Things You Need to Know to Be Great in Business" by Mark Cuban, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 21, 2014.

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• Elizabeth Drescher makes a convincing case for why digital social media and Church not only go hand in hand, but how new technologies can help us reclaim traditions from the past in updated ways for today.

  Donna Freitas

  Past, Technology, Media

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• As commonly understood, creationism involves belief in an earth formed only about ten thousand years ago, an interpretation of the Bible that is still very popular. For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.

  Michael Behe

  Years, Ideas, Doubt

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• A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Lying, Long, Black

  "Notes On Structured Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra, April 1970.

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• When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate its correctness in a convincing manner, then the above remarks have a profound influence on the programmer's activity: the object he has to produce must be usefully structured.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Responsibility, Profound, Influence

  "Notes On Structured Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra, April 1970.

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• I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.

  Jenny Eclair

  Actresses, Punk

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• I hope I'm always convincing when I act!

  Colin Baker

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• The woman is the man's glory, and she naturally delights in the praises which are assurances that she is fulfilling her function; and she gives herself to him who succeeds in convincing her that she, of all others, is best able to discharge it for him. A woman without this kind of "vanity" is a monster.

  Coventry Patmore

  Women, Vanity, Giving

  Coventry Patmore (2016). “The Rod, the Root and the Flower”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing.

  George Meredith

  Struggle, Men, Reflection

  George Meredith (1922). “The Complete Works of George Meredith”, p.4327, Library of Alexandria

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• I'm in the process of convincing my parents to sell me their house so I can just live in my childhood bedroom forever. I figure it might make me age slower.

  Pete Wentz

  House, Childhood, Parent

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• In today's roller-coaster economy, hyper-competitive, fear-based, flat and global world, convincing anyone to do anything at any time requires getting their attention, creating their intention and turning it to action.

  Peter Guber

  Creating, Attention, World

  "How to Harness the Power of Storytelling for Your Small Business". Interview with Melinda Emerson, succeedasyourownboss.com. November 21, 2012.

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• Of course you have memories, and these memories are convincing. But it's really at the moment when I write them down - when I write about my relationship with that Japanese boy in Ni d'Eve, Ni d'Adam - that they reach a degree of reality which is incandescent, that I've really conquered a story, understood it and feel that it is really part of me.

  Amelie Nothomb

  Memories, Writing, Reality

  "The outsider" by Richard Lea, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2008.

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• In Heaven all reviews will be favorable; here on earth, the publisher realizes, plausibility demands an occasional bad one, some convincing lump in all that leaven, and he accepts it somewhat as a theologian accepts Evil.

  Randall Jarrell

  Evil, Heaven, Demand

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Contemporary Poetry Criticism" (p. 59), 1980.

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• Producers generally don't like me; directors do, generally. Convincing the producers is hard. They can't see the commercial value behind such a face, nor would they get a commercial value, necessarily - and I don't mean that in a good way or a bad way.

  Amanda Plummer

  Mean, Directors, Way

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Visionaries, Slave, Employee

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.1727, Random House

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• As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Teaching, Reading, Challenges

  "Chang-rae Lee on War, Alienation, and the Power of Reading". Interview with Ru Freeman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 15, 2012.

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• Combinatorics is an honest subject. No adèles, no sigma-algebras. You count balls in a box, and you either have the right number or you haven't. You get the feeling that the result you have discovered is forever, because it's concrete. Other branches of mathematics are not so clear-cut. Functional analysis of infinite-dimensional spaces is never fully convincing; you don't get a feeling of having done an honest day's work. Don't get the wrong idea - combinatorics is not just putting balls into boxes. Counting finite sets can be a highbrow undertaking, with sophisticated techniques.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Cutting, Math, Ideas

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