Tension Quotes - Page 4

• My breathing begins to slow. The tension in my muscles starts to relax. Then, a click in the headphones. A slow breath of air. I open my eyes to bright moonlight. And Hannah, with warmth. Thank you.

  Jay Asher

  Eye, Breathing, Air

  Jay Asher (2016). “Thirteen Reasons Why 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.144, Penguin

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• Direct your attention inward. Have a look inside yourself. What kind of thoughts is your mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into the body. Is there any tension? Once you detect that there is a low level of unease, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding, resisting, or denying life-by denying the Now.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Mind, Inward

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.77, New World Library

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• When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Together, Looks, Syntax

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• Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

  William Landay

  Stories, Conflict, Driven

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• We, black British, were searching - as the first generation that was born and raised here - for our own identity. We already knew what the Caribbean thing was about. We grew up with the racial tension and unrest. They were either touching your head for good luck or kicking you down the stairs for being too dark. But that was part and parcel of how we grew up in London. But in terms of our identity, it was more about us claiming it y'know?

  Jazzie B

  Good Luck, Dark, Touching

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• The one thing that I love about the live audience is the energy level. Like, from the minute of cast introductions, it's just constant energy being traded back and forth. When you do something funny, the audience laughs; when you're being serious, you can, like, feel the tension going through the audience.

  Jonathan Sadowski

  Laughing, Energy, Levels

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• I am convinced that the public, large majority of the Greek people, realize that policies pursued in the past and the market practices have to be changed, in order to improve the prospects of the Greek economy. So there is, I think, strong public support despite the increases in social tensions.

  Lucas Papademos

  Strong, Past, Thinking

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• Play: It is an an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action.

  Johan Huizinga

  Order, Play, Space

  Johan Huizinga (1949). “Homo Ludens”, p.132, Taylor & Francis

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• In editing, it's amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It's amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension.

  Sean Durkin

  Cutting, Editing, Creating

  "FUTURES| Sundance’s Golden Boy Sean Durkin, Director/Writer of 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'" by Nigel M. Smith, www.indiewire.com. October 20, 2011.

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• Almost inevitably there are tensions in the picture, tensions between the outside world and the inside world. For me, a successful picture resolves these tensions without eliminating them.

  Aaron Siskind

  Successful, World, Photographer

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• The more I think about sex, the better it gets. Here we have a purpose in life, good for the blood circulation, good for releasing the tension.

  Kate Bush

  Sex, Good Life, Thinking

  Song: Symphony In Blue, Album: Lionheart, 1978

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• Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

  Criss Jami

  Compassion, Auto Tune, Gossip

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.80, Criss Jami

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• The tensions are always based on financial resources. Something like film is very problematic because it is viewed as an art form and also as an industry with a pure commercial base.

  Ann Macbeth

  Art, Financial, Film

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• Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.

  Theodor Adorno

  Self, Evil, Matter

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.238, Verso

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• The most interesting character to me is someone who is stuck in the no man's land between Belief and Unbelief, Faith and Faithlessness. I'm capitalizing like a German, but it doesn't matter whether it's faith in a person or in God, or belief in science or whatever, it's the desperate in-between state that makes for interesting dramatic tension.

  Richard Dooling

  Character, Men, Land

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• Whatever tension is on set can end up on your face.

  Lauren Hutton

  Faces, Your Face, Ends

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• The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Writing, Thinking, Interesting

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• There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Gymnastics, Grace, Athleticism

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• Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

  David Sanborn

  Drama, Thinking, Smooth Jazz

  "Once-stricken saxman: Music 'gave me my life'". Interview with Shanon Cook, www.cnn.com. August 15, 2008.

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• ...But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution....And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.

  Olive Ann Burns

  Meaningful, Real, Book

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• The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Musical, Sound, Syntax

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• Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

  David Guterson

  Cities, Needs, Melancholy

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• I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Believe, Past, Trying

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• My mother was a single working mother; she started having children very young. There was a tension inside her about who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do and how she couldn’t achieve the things she wanted to.

  Natalie Merchant

  Mother, Children, Achieve

  "Natalie Merchant On Motherhood As Muse". Interview with Laura Rowley, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2012.

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• I think 'Scarface' is a great film, but if you have a character like Tony Montana, you don't identify with him at all. I think it's very interesting instead to identify yourself with a character you don't like all the time. You can create a tension between the fiction and the viewer. You force the spectator to wonder about his actions.

  Jacques Audiard

  Character, Thinking, Interesting

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