Words matter. These are the best Passages Quotes from famous people such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William H. Gass, Otto Dix, Andrea Bocelli, Lev Grossman, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers… but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
As a young man you don’t notice at all that you were, after all, badly affected. For years afterwards, at least ten years, I kept getting these dreams, in which I had to crawl through ruined houses, along passages I could hardly get through.
The nature of music is mysterious and so much so that it generates strong emotions within us. It moves along passages that reach the most intimate areas of our psyche without being tried by prejudices or influences of any kind.
The year after I graduated college I had a job in a library. When people underlined passages in the library books, or made notes in the margins, the books were sent to me. I erased the lines and the notes. Yes, that was my job.
I don’t necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote ‘Warped Passages,’ I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.
‘Words and Music’ on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can’t cheat.
I do not care so much for the death of my gunner, as for other passages of my voyage, for I have good friends in England that will bring me off for that.
You reach out your hand, but you’re all alone, in those time passages.
Script for an actor is like a bible. You carry it with you, you read it over and over, you go to your passages.
I am still moved by passages of Marx: the ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,’ for example, where, after the famous line about religion being ‘the opium of the people,’ he goes on to call it ‘the heart of a heartless world.’
I am really pleased to sign permanently with St. Etienne. It was my ambition in coming to St. Etienne. This is one of the finest passages of my young career.
One of my favorite passages in ‘Leaves of Grass,’ that breathless, exuberant poem so rich and full of innocence and joy and generosity and compassion, is ‘Mannahatta.’
The Anti-Slavery public have generously responded to our appeal, and sent the means to enable us to fit them out well, to pay their passages, supply them with many useful articles and give the Missionaries money to sustain themselves for a while.
My process is pretty messy, and there’s a lot of creative destruction in it. When I set out to write something, I’ll write some passages from it just to figure out who these characters are, how they talk. And I have a dim sense of what it’s about and where it’s going to go, but I know that’s going to change, too.
My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, ‘How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?’
About 100 things that your kid will do that will surprise you and break your heart and it will be a combination of fact based therapy, medically advised kinds of passages accompanied by celebrity anecdotes and just some funny stuff to lighten the load.
During my life I have heard many sermons on the Resurrection. I can recite the events of that first Easter Sunday. I have marked in my scriptures passages regarding the Resurrection.
In my memoir, I admit that I’ve been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when ‘Passages’ was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.
The hours I spent attempting to decipher some of Dunnett’s more oblique passages opened me to the possibilities of romantic storytelling.
Once or twice, I’ve taken the Gideon Bible out of the drawer, opened it at random, and found myself stuck in the middle of a genealogical list. And that’s when I thought: why not cherry-pick the best bits, passages that people can actually use?
Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting ‘Hiawatha’ and they groan.
When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.
Well, writing for me had always been my first love and what I leaned on as a way to kind of endure difficult passages.
I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish – occasionally I do windows.
Yeah, you know, you like it to come on like gangbusters, but you get into passages that are very interesting and subtle, and sometimes your original intent changes quite a bit.
Oh, he’s magic. Faulkner has opened passages in my brain. You do things you’d never expect.
One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.
As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup – a little went a long way. Like cilantro.
I grew up in the Methodist church and taught Sunday school, and one of my favorite passages of scripture is, ‘in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ Matthew 25:40.
I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.
Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle’s Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.
By the time I went to college, I knew the major passages of the Bible pretty much by heart.
The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.
My interest in self-help began when I was a child in the Seventies. My mum had a book she would consult regularly: ‘Passages’ by Gail Sheehy, which deals with the challenging stages of growing up.
