Teo > Teo's Quotes

“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Globe

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrafice everything for a dream that can never come true. Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“Nerd. Geek. Used to be if you self-identified that way, you'd get thrown into a locker and never have sex. Or worse, whatever that is. But to me and more and more people I know, being a nerd or a geek means having passion, power, intelligence. Being a nerd just means there is something in the world that you care deeply about—be it twelve-sided dice, a favorite sports team, your new laptop or Night Rider.”
― Olivia Munn, Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek

“I will take a serious approach to a subject usually treated lightly, which is a nerdy thing to do.”
― Benjamin Nugent, American Nerd: The Story of My People

“Being able to use the word “geek” has helped me a lot to define myself, but not as a mold for me to fit myself into, as a template to help accentuate my differences.”
― Jon Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho

“You're a lot of horrible things - untehical, sociopathic, evil even - but you're no idiot.”
― Matt Forbeck, The Con Job

“One must seek to live with others in solidarity..only through communication can human life hold meaning.”
― Paulo Freire

“Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.”
― Joss Whedon

“If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“How can you claim to have a passionate interest in something, and then make no effort to properly understand it?”
― Simon Cheshire, Plastic Fantastic

“A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“If we don't defend what we love-if we let it fade-then our lives lose meaning. We must declare ourselves of what we are...What we love.”
― Guillermo Del Toro

“video games are the comic books of our time... It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia".”
― Guillermo Del Toro

“It’s important for little girls to know not every story has to be a love story and for boys to know that soldiers aren’t the only ones to triumph in war.”
― Guillermo del Toro

“Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple…when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us…”
― Guillermo del Toro, The Fall

“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.”
― Guillermo del Toro

“God is an energy, rather than an anthropomorphic being, and God's language is biology. Red blood cells, the principle of magnetic attraction, neurological synapse: each is a miracle, and in each is the presence and flow of God.”
― Guillermo del Toro, The Night Eternal

“Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art”
― Miguel de Cervantes

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it.”
― Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

“When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn’t bother with the pretenses. They’re just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code— the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.”
― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“One significant development with regards to these muses of modern-day art is that the gender roles that were used in the past are no longer valid. The days where the women were the ones who solely inspired the men are no longer as both men and women alike are able to make efforts to create music and other forms of art.”
― Kytka Hilmar-Jezek, CELLOGIRLS: Identity and Transformation in 2CELLOS Fan Culture

“For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Architecture is the very mirror of life. You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.”
― I. M. Pei

“Culture is like a giant mirror which enables us to see who we are
more clearly. The various facets of a culture also provide us with the means to change what we do not like in the mirror, and retain what we cherish most.”
― Dr Robin Lincoln Wood, The Trouble with Paradise: A Humorous Enquiry into the Puzzling Human Condition in the 21st Century

“Pe peretele opus se află o oglindă; ea nu se sinchiseşte de această oglindă, în schimb oglinda se sinchiseşte de ea. Cu câtă fidelitate îi redă imaginea! E ca un sclav umil care-şi dovedeşte ataşamentul prin fidelitate, un sclav pentru care ea prezintă cea mai mare importanţă, dar care n-are pentru ea nici o importanţă, un sclav care îndrăzneşte să-i înţeleagă dorinţele, dar nu şi curajul de a face dragoste cu ea. Şi această nefericită oglindă care are acum imaginea ei, dar n-o are şi pe ea, care nu-i poate păstra chipul în ascunzătorile ei tainice, smulgând-o vederii lumii întregi, căci nu ştie altceva decât s-o arate altora cum mi-o arată mie acum! Ce supliciu pentru un bărbat dacă ar fi în locul oglinzii! Şi cu toate astea, nu sunt oare destui bărbaţi care au întru totul trăsăturile oglinzii? Care nu posedă nimic decât în momentul în care arată altora, care nu sesizează decât aparenţa lucrurilor, iar nu substanţa lor? Care pierd totul în momentul în care ceea ce posedă are dorinţa de a se arăta, exact ca această oglindă care i-ar pierde imaginea îndată ce ea ar dori să-i deschidă inima? Dacă un bărbat nu e capabil să păstreze în memorie imaginea frumuseţii nici măcar în clipa prezenţei acesteia, el ar trebui, în acest caz, să dorească să fie totdeauna departe de ea, niciodată prea aproape; de aproape, el nu vede ce strânge în braţe, îndepărtându-se, vede din nou... Dar în momentul în care el nu poate vedea obiectul pentru că e aproape de el, în momentul în care buzele lor se unesc într-un sărut, ceea ce strânge în braţe ar putea fi totuşi vizibil pentru ochii sufletului său...”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Seducer’s Diary