Puzzling Quotes - Page 2

• One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that "the way it really was" half the time is, and half the time isn't, the way it ought to be in the novel.

  Randall Jarrell

  Half, Way, Novel

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, p. 46, 1969.

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• It took some time before the public learned that to appreciate an Impressionist painting one has to step back a few yards, and enjoy the miracle of seeing these puzzling patches suddenly fall into one place and come to life before our eyes.

  Ernst Gombrich

  Fall, Eye, Appreciate

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• I found 'The Twin' sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee. That seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it - weeping - a day later, and I've been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since.

  Amy Waldman

  Powerful, Coffee, Writing

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• The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Feelings, Kitchen, Arriving

  Elizabeth Strout (2013). “Amy & Isabelle”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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• I try to weave a secret into each plot. It's the thread that holds the rest of the story fabric together. In fact, it's the reason for the story. I hint at the secret early on. Immediately I want the reader to get the feeling that something here isn't quite right. It helps maintain the suspense if a puzzling element is introduced in the first few pages of the book, but the answer isn't revealed until the final ones. Hopefully, readers want to know what the heck is really going on, and it's the desire to find out that keeps them turning pages.

  Sandra Brown

  Book, Feelings, Secret

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

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• The fact Jeff Teague has never been an All-Star is puzzling to me because he's certainly an All-Star-caliber player.

  Frank Vogel

  Stars, Player, Facts

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• The puzzling thing is that there is really a curious coincidence between astrological and psychological facts, so that one can isolate time from the characteristics of an individual, and also, one can deduce characteristics from a certain time.

  Carl Jung

  Astrology, Facts, Coincidence

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• A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Country, Art, Socialist Countries

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• This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.

  George Eliot

  World, Fingers

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.307, George Eliot

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• The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.

  E. B. White

  Media, Roles, News

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• What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

  Thomas Browne

  Song, Names, Achilles

  Hydriotaphia ch. 5 (1658)

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• The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing.

  Richard Leakey

  Art, Powerful, Symbolism

  Richard Leakey (2008). “The Origin Of Humankind”, p.124, Hachette UK

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• How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.

  Lewis Carroll

  Wonderland, Minutes, One Minute

  Lewis Carroll (2010). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass”, p.35, Cosimo, Inc.

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• He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.

  Neil Gaiman

  Hero, Kissing, Coats

  Neil Gaiman (2007). “Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie”, Vertigo

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• The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.

  John Polkinghorne

  Science, Progress, Encounters

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• There is seemingly so little love shared in this world, it is not surprising that we ask, "Where have all the lovers gone?" Since love is the most vital energy for good that is within our power to utilize, it is puzzling why we so seldom do so. Love is just a useless, abstract idea until we put it into action...unless we are always actively living in love, we are not utilizing the greatest gift we have been given and which we, in turn, have to offer.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Love You, Love Is, Ideas

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• ...it is quite obvious that the temperature change during the last 100 years or so includes significant natural changes, both the linear change and fluctuations. It is very puzzling that the IPCC reports state that it is mostly due to the greenhouse effect.

  Syun-Ichi Akasofu

  Years, Energy, Lasts

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• We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

  Asa Gray

  Philosophical, Science, Animal

  Asa Gray (1973). “Letters of Asa Gray”

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• In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.

  Garry Kasparov

  America, Chess, Facts

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• Over the past eighteen years I have acted as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on the subject of unidentified flying objects - UFO's. As a consequence of my work on the voluminous air force files and, to a greater extent, of personal investigation of many puzzling cases and interviews with witnesses of good repute, I have long been aware that the subject of UFO's could not be dismissed as mere nonsense.

  J. Allen Hynek

  Past, Air, Years

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• After a lifetime in this subject, I have concluded that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is one reasonable tentative approach to putting the best-documented and most puzzling UFO reports into a scientifically defensible conceptual framework. By such reports I mean those with credible multiple or independent witnesses, instrumented observations, and physical evidence.

  Jerome Clark

  Mean, Independent, Lifetime

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• She said she’d often wondered why she wanted to do some things and not do other things at all. Well, it was obvious with some things, but for others, there was no reason there. She’d spent a long time puzzling it out, then she thought that what you’d done in a past life you didn’t need to do again, and what you had to do in the future, you wouldn’t be ready to do now.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Past, Long, Needs

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.155, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Mikeru was still puzzling over Horace's last remark. He frowned. 'Kurokuma, these shenanigans... What are they?' 'Shenanigans are what Rangers do. They usually involve doing things that risk breaking your neck or your leg.' Mikeru nodded, filing the word away. 'I will remember this word,' he said. 'Shenanigans. It is a good word.'

  John Flanagan

  Risk, Shenanigans, Legs

  "The Emperor of Nihon-Ja".

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• Ohm (a distinguished mathematician, be it noted) brought into order a host of puzzling facts connecting electromotive force and electric current in conductors, which all previous electricians had only succeeded in loosely binding together qualitatively under some rather vague statements. Even as late as 20 years ago, "quantity" and "tension" were much used by men who did not fully appreciate Ohm's law.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Men, Order

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• I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away. I'm looking for the truth." And so it goes away. Puzzling.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Truth, Real, Thinking

  Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.6, Harper Collins

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