Roxana > Roxana's Quotes

“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. ”
― Stephen Sondheim

“Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.”
― Joss Whedon

“There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called 'fan fiction'.”
― Joss Whedon

“Two things that matter to me. Emotional resonance and rocket launchers.”
― Joss Whedon

“Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.”
― Joss Whedon

“All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.”
― Joss Whedon

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged by male energy.”
― Björk

“It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”
― Roger Ebert

“If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?”
― Warren Ellis

“An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger. ”
― Dan Rather

“If TV were only an invention to broadcast soccer, it would be justified.”
― Roberto Fontanarrosa

“How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

“Unless the object of the singer’s affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is unphotogenic. Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate ‘-enic’ rhymes are hard to come by.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes

“Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.

Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view.”
― Shel Silverstein

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.”
― Stephen Sondheim

“in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me”
― E.E. Cummings

“When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

“What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

“Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

“All thinking men are atheists.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference