Explaining Quotes - Page 12

• When I was 13, I asked for a guitar. And that's how I really started explaining my point of view.

  Katy Perry

  Guitar, Views, Point Of View

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• I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different.

  Martin Gore

  Song, Hate, Mean

  "Depeche Mode 'Exciter' Interview". The Mitch Schneider Organization interview, www.msopr.com. April 15, 2001.

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• At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Pathways, Adaptation, Advantage

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• Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum - for small things.

  Brian Greene

  Jobs, Doe, Fantastic

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• As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short of adequately explaining how he intends to set America back on the course of fiscal responsibility and secure the fiscal health of the nation.

  Ron Kind

  Responsibility, America, President

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• Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

  Donald Knuth

  Change, Attitude, Learning

  "The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3". Book by Donald Knuth, www.wired.com. 1973.

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• I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

  Philip Larkin

  Writing, Sleep, Organization

  "Philip Larkin's Everyday Poetry" by Henry Allen, www.washingtonpost.com. June 3, 1989.

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• It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  People, Pages, Used

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• I think I'm becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It's the only way you can explain 'em. It's psychological.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Party, Thinking, Ems

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• If Romney would go ideological in explaining Obama, it would help. We gotta stop the, 'He's a nice guy' stuff. Nice guys don't do what Obama is doing. Nice guys don't say and do and act the way Obama is saying, doing, and acting.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Nice, Guy, Acting

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• If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.

  Orson Scott Card

  Creativity, Men, Order

  Orson Scott Card (2009). “Shadow of the Giant”, p.303, Macmillan

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• This time I m not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there.

  Paulo Coelho

  Country, Ideas, Insanity

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• You do not interrupt a man when he is explaining his master plan after having been soundly defeated. Don't you watch any James Bond Movies?

  Katie MacAlister

  Men, Watches, Defeated

  Katie Macalister (2009). “Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang: A Dark Ones Novel”, p.215, Penguin

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• All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.... You can describe all the externals of a performance - everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is what's left over after you've explained everything else.

  Edward Gorey

  Important, Going Away, Facts

  Edward Gorey (2001). “Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey : Interviews”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.

  Mark Twain

  Frogs, Ends, Process

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• You have everything. A family, a great job, a lot of people who look up to you. You've got a place to go home to. So go.

  Jodi Picoult

  Jobs, Children, Home

  "Mercy". Book by Jodi Picoult, 1996.

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• Friendship...is like pain. Explaining it is impossible.

  Norma Fox Mazer

  Pain, Impossible

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• I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

  Arthur Golden

  Sleep, Men, Elderly

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• Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)

  Joseph Brodsky

  Conversation, Dislike

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• Parla come magni,' It means, 'Speak the way you eat,' or in my personal translation: 'Say it like you eat it.' It's a reminder - when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words - to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman rood. Don't make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Mean, Simple, Tables

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.91, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• But if it couldn't be love and it didn't feel like lust, what was it? Like? Did he like her? Of course, he did, but that word didn't capture his feelings, either. It was a little too... vague and soft around the edges. People liked ice cream. People liked to watch television. It meant nothing, and it didn't come close to explaining why, for the first time, he felt the urge to tell someone the truth.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Ice Cream, People, Feelings

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• The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.

  Terry Eagleton

  Jesus, Pain, Justice

  Terry Eagleton (2014). “Reason, Faith, & Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate”, p.27, Yale University Press

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• I was gushing and I knew it. I surprised myself with my eagerness to please, felt myself saying too much, explaining too much, overinvolved and overexcited in the way you are when you're a kid and you think you've found a soul mate in the new boy down the street and you feel yourself drawn by the force of the courtship and so act as you don't normally do and a lot more openly than you may even want to.

  Philip Roth

  Kids, Boys, Thinking

  Philip Roth (2000). “The Human Stain: A Novel”, p.43, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.

  Khalil Gibran

  Spiritual, Eye, Dark

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• Aureliano not only understood by then, he also lived his brother’s experiences as something of his own, for on one occasion when the latter was explaining in great detail the mechanism of love, he interrupted him to ask: “What does it feel like?” José Arcadio gave an immediate reply: “It’s like an earthquake.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Brother, Earthquakes, Details

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