My parents were very, very close; they pretty much grew up together. They were born in 1912. They were each other’s only boyfriend and girlfriend. They were – to use a contemporary term I hate – co-dependent, and they had me very late. So they had their way of doing things, and they reinforced each other.
Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous – in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture – that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it.
I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.
I found that a lot of people ridiculed contemporary art. I decided I wanted to be involved in art everybody could understand.
One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today – love, money, family. They haven’t gone out of fashion, so it’s not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.
In the contemporary world, artists are almost entirely self-referential.
The music that I’ve made in the past has had strong contemporary country roots, but I think moving on in music, I will branch out from that a bit.
There’s traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that’s the last thing on an artist’s mind.
A contemporary artist can use the findings of all epochs and all styles, from the most primitive literary expressions up to the most refined products of the baroque.
Dabbling with Tagore was always scary. It happens with masters, with contemporary poets you know their vibes and their meaning. Tagore was different; his aura and the feel of his language was different.
Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times.
In the future, I would like to do more films with contemporary themes. Perhaps comedy, which is something I have done in theater but not in cinema.
‘If The Weather Permits’ was closer to my heart because it was a woman closer to my age, with a contemporary background like mine. I felt for that character. I’ve seen so many women like that – smart women who are a wreck when it comes to their emotional lives.
I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
It’s the contemporary woman that movies don’t know what to do with, other than bathe her in a bridal glow in romantic comedies where both the romance and the comedy are artificial sweeteners.
I like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, but some of the older ones it’s hard for me to sit down with – when I sit down to read some poetry, I usually read more contemporary stuff.
Karl Lagerfeld is amazing. Chanel is such an iconic brand, but he always finds innovative ways to bring a contemporary feel to new collections.
A contemporary artist like Grayson Perry is brilliant partly because of his expert knowledge of art history, not despite it.
A writer’s ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years’ time and for one reader in a hundred years’ time.
To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible – that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins.
The alliance in Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most important developments on the contemporary political scene.
As a writer, I think I’m mainly interested in contemporary themes, so when I create my own stuff, it’s inherently that. But as an actor, I would like to do lots of different things. I would love to play someone completely different from myself in a costume drama.
I want to offer a wide range of classic and contemporary bridalwear to suit all personalities, readily available to try on.
The great jazz radio stations have a duty to continue evolving their format just as audiences ask the musicians to evolve. How do you do that with a form of music that has 100 years of recorded history? How do you also keep it contemporary so you don’t isolate your listeners? These are major questions.
Some comic artists I’ve known are better than most contemporary artists with work hanging in Tate Modern.
In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.
I’m interested in teasing out the contemporary issues in what I’m working on, however old the piece might be, whenever I’m working on it.
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn’t that they are inaccurate, but that they’re incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn’t that it’s inaccurate, it’s that it’s incomplete.
I think Bruno Mars is a great example of a great voice and classic songwriting with a twist that makes it contemporary. I think he’s done a great job of it. I think Katy Perry has undeniable songs for what she does, for that pop market. And, if we’re talking in the truly pop market, I would say those two.
Hebrew as a contemporary language, especially for poetry, is no longer the language of the Bible; but neither is it not the language of the Bible.
Compared to our era, facilities in athletics have increased manifold. But contemporary athletes are not mentally tough. The new generation wants everything easily, but it is not possible in athletics.
I learned how to incorporate heirloom furniture, artwork and objects d’art to work with exciting new contemporary pieces.
Theatre has always been better disposed to colourblind casting than telly or film. Given that most television is contemporary, and it reaches 56 million people, I am disappointed there still isn’t more representation.
Contemporary paganism gives me a subjective lens through which the world in which I live can be interpreted on an aesthetic and an ethical basis. I’m interested in narrative, myth, and story, in folklore and the way we connect to the turning of the seasons and the natural world.
I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries.
Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
I’ve had a love affair with the desert ever since I can remember. No matter what I wrote – contemporary romance, spy thriller, high fantasy – it was going to have a desert in it.
But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn’t work in contemporary storytelling because we don’t live in that world anymore.
I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
I started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.
I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.
Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one’s way.
I try to be as honest as I possibly can about the contradictions within my own heart and thereby get to something ‘true’ and revealing and important about contemporary American culture and human nature.
Some critics said, ‘Hey, why are you writing historical novels?’ I say they’re not historical, they’re contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn’t just what you can see now.
I have a British voice and a rather formal one at that, having been brought up in post-WWII Britain. My voice is perfectly suited to the sort of book I write, I think. It would not fit a contemporary, besides which I do not know enough about the contemporary world to write convincingly or comfortably about it!
I’ve come to realize that the contemporary creative culture is not generating the best possible outcome.
Because contemporary paganism is essentially so new, its underlying ethical structure is not particularly sophisticated.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to publish – or read – books that have a wide potential audience. But it does generate a certain plodding sameness of tone and subject matter that plagues a lot of contemporary American fiction.
Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.
But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man.
