Alvarez Quotes & Sayings

I have learned that each and every piece of cloth embodies the spirit, skill, and personal history of an individual weaver. . . . It ties together with an endless thread the emotional life of my people. — Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez

There's so much stuff going on behind the cameras. Sometimes people think these things are done certain ways and when you watch that you see how hard and down and dirty it was. — Fede Alvarez

The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be. — Al Alvarez

It doesn't matter the amount of gore, the amount of shocks that you can have in a movie if the movie's not entertaining, if the story's not entertaining. — Fede Alvarez

This simple dessert reminds me a little of our relationship, sweet and decadent and oh so bad for you. — Alexis Alvarez

As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, 'I was told by one teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure. — Julia Alvarez

You're like this frosting." She swiped another swirl of it on her finger, stood and leaned forward to touch it to his bottom lip. "Pretty, momentarily pleasurable, but with no real substance or sustenance. — Tracey Alvarez

There's a limit beyond which one cannot progress. The differences between the limiting abilities of those on successively higher steps of the pyramid are enormous. I have not seen described anywhere the shock a talented man experiences when he finds, late in his academic life, that there are others enormously more talented than he. I have personally seen more tears shed by grown men and women over this discovery than I would have believed possible. — Luis W. Alvarez

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world. — Julia Alvarez

Rockwing charged, closing the few feet between them, slicing the forest floor with his sharpened hooves. "You will," he shouted. Star crouched, ears flat, tail tucked, bearing the wrath of the over-stallion, which washed over him like a hot breeze and yet caused his legs to tremble. They stared at each other for a long time, but Star didn't back down. — Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

Sci-fi is definitely something that I've been wanting to do again since Panic Attack and I want to do it on a feature scale. — Fede Alvarez

Rocks are the key to Earth history, because solids remember but liquids and gases forget. — Walter Alvarez

I always say that I am a big fan of films but I am an even bigger fan of the filmmaking craft. — Fede Alvarez

Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights. He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul - his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self. — Al Alvarez

Janet Landis came to work in my group in the summer of 1957 when our first bubble-chamber was churning out its earliest pictures. — Luis Walter Alvarez

I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job. — Luis Walter Alvarez

He dived under and let the cool water soothe his throbbing wings and raise them off his back. He glided in a lazy circle around Bumblewind, who was not a fast swimmer. Morningleaf paddled above them, her wings extended and her neck flat, the sunlight filtering through her aqua feathers casting stripes of color across the water. Star floated over the tops of the lake plants. — Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons. — Luis Walter Alvarez

West, at the wheel, continued practicing his thousand yard stare. Probably thought it made him look windswept and interesting. Dammit, it did. — Tracey Alvarez

I graduated. I did History of Art, you know, all those things - American Studies - and then I went to art school, and I did Joseph Alvarez in the art school. — Peter Beard

Arthur Compton became my graduate advisor. He was the ideal graduate advisor for me: he came into my research room only once during my graduate career and usually had no idea how I was spending my time. — Luis W. Alvarez

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values. — Al Alvarez

Because Ernest Lawrence's award came in the war years, I had the unusual opportunity of attending his Nobel Prize presentation ceremony. — Luis Walter Alvarez

warm enough to be comfortable in only a shirt. "You look like — Tracey Alvarez

On the second to last day, Lt. Russo, who ran the program, announced, "Unless you were at dinner last night and had the opportunity to say 'Howard, pass the salt,' you are going to Brooklyn North and Manhattan North. That's where they need people, and that's where you're going." "Howard" referred to to the Commissioner Safir, and when they read the list of assignments the next afternoon
"Alvarez ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Baker ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Buono ... Manhattan North ... "
"Calderon ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Conlon ... South Bronx Initiative ... "
more than a few people turned around to look. Howard, pass the salt. I was a little surprised myself. — Edward Conlon

In a way, the popularity of Corona came too fast for its own good, initially. We took a few steps back. — Carlos Alvarez

The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money. — Al Alvarez

Everyone knows that what they see in the movies is not real, but they're still able to let themselves go for two hours and "believe" what they see up on the screen. — Bryan Alvarez

No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life. — Al Alvarez

I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision. — Fede Alvarez

If the president of the college had asked me what I thought about Dewey McLean, I'd say he's a weak sister. I thought he'd been knocked out of the ball game and had just disappeared, because nobody invites him to conferences anymore. — Luis Walter Alvarez

I would favor a law that no one could ever buy a gun. — Anita Alvarez

In 'Clockwork Orange,' you're there with your eyes, watching all those things, your brain goes off, ahh, exposes you to so many things, and at the end of the day, it's just like a roller coaster. Why do you jump in a roller coaster? You want a thrill. — Fede Alvarez

Foolish man, what do you bemoan, and what do you fear? Wherever you look there is an end of evils. You see that yawning precipice? It leads to liberty. You see that flood, that river, that well? Liberty houses within them. You see that stunted, parched, and sorry tree? From each branch liberty hangs. Your neck, your throat, your heart are all so many ways of escape from slavery [...] Do you enquire the road to freedom? You shall find it in every vein of your body. — Al Alvarez

From that altitude, the world looked calm and vivid and possible. But by the time we landed at Prestwick the clouds were down like the black cap on a hanging judge. — Al Alvarez

Most filmmakers go out with the first feature and nobody cares. — Fede Alvarez

Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature! — Julia Alvarez

I give the moment permanence. — Manuel Alvarez Bravo

I'm pretty demanding with myself and my work, and I always put a lot of pressure on myself. I try to do the best job I can every time. — Fede Alvarez

I fare the best when I'm in dangerous situations. — Eddie Alvarez

My dad was very religious growing up and a little bit closed minded, and I think me being in the theater, two of my three sisters are dancers, so being in the arts world has changed and opened him up in a lot of ways. — Frankie J. Alvarez

Independence didn't have to be exile. — Julia Alvarez

Someone who believes everything he is told simply can't be a scientist, but someone who believes nothing will wind up in jail or prematurely buried. — Luis Alvarez

PG-13 horror, I just don't watch that. — Fede Alvarez

I write to find out what I am thinking.
I write to find out who I am.
I write to understand things. — Julia Alvarez

Suicide may be a declaration of bankruptcy which passes judgement on a life as one long history of failures. But it is a history which also amounts at least to this one decision which, by its very finality, is not wholly a failure. Some kind of minimal freedom - the freedom to die in one's own way and in one's own time - has been salvaged from the wreck of all those unwanted necessities. — Al Alvarez

No one gets a crystal ball, and you can't drive across the country looking in your rear view mirror. — Richard P. Alvarez

Most of us who become experimental physicists do so for two reasons; we love the tools of physics because to us they have intrinsic beauty, and we dream of finding new secrets of nature as important and as exciting as those uncovered by our scientific heroes. — Luis Walter Alvarez

There's no doubt having an autistic child represents tremendous challenges for both the children and their parents, but in my experience, it has brought me closer to my family and has given me an appreciation for how the human brain develops and the uniqueness of each child it afflicts. — Manny Alvarez

Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small? — Langston Hughes

As long as I ride motorcycles, which God willing is another 50 years, I'll always have Alvarez in my heart. I'm hoping for 10 seasons of Sons of Anarchy. — Emilio Rivera

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level. — Al Alvarez

If my photos have any value, it's because they show a Mexico that no longer exists. — Lola Alvarez Bravo

Suicide is a confession of failure. And like divorce, it is shrouded in excuses and rationalizations spun endlessly to disguise the simple fact that all one's energy, passion, appetite and ambition have been aborted. — Al Alvarez

One simple kiss? Something must've shorted in her brain, because this kiss tap-danced all over simple. — Tracey Alvarez

When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family. — Julia Alvarez

There are still so many unanswered questions about what causes autism and other developmental disorders on the spectrum. So it is vital that we continue to research and educate ourselves in the hopes that we may begin to understand the challenges that these children and their families continue to face with each passing day. — Manny Alvarez

Everybody has a role on the team, and some have a role as a scout team player. They have to emulate the offenses that we are going to face. Those players still have to go through the out-of-season work and they work hard. — Barry Alvarez

I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for. — Al Alvarez

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like. — Julia Alvarez

One could think of a person who seems to have two opposing and contradictory sides to his personality; but it turns out that in the end the two sides are complementary. The same happens with an artist's work: deep down, what appear as contradictory sides are merely different registers, different aspects of the reality that the artist inhabits — Manuel Alvarez Bravo

My grandma was actually a pretty well-known opera singer in Cuba, and then my mom was a ballerina. Two of my three sisters are dancers, so we grew up in the arts. — Frankie J. Alvarez

It's a convention, but in horror movies the female characters usually tend to believe easier in a supernatural event. — Fede Alvarez

Dirac politely refused Robert's [Robert Oppenheimer] two proffered books: reading books, the Cambridge theoretician announced gravely, "interfered with thought." — Luis Walter Alvarez

I'm good at reading people. — Al Alvarez

Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being. — Julia Alvarez

Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened in them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based. — Al Alvarez

Depression is always in the details. — Julia Alvarez

A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring. — Fede Alvarez

A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart. — Julia Alvarez

I can't point to my work and say, 'This is my work.' My work lives in me, so when people criticize my work, they're also criticizing me. It's really hard to sort of divorce that sensitivity. — Frankie J. Alvarez

Honestly, when you're writing you try to stay on the story, on the character's mind, trying to throw stuff at them. There is danger, and the scares have to kick in the right places with the drama. And you try not to do too much to try to create those moments. Those moments create themselves. — Fede Alvarez

Around the lab I heard that publicity was measured in an absolute unit, the "kan". That unit was too large for ordinary application and a practical unit one one-thousandth of the size served in its place, the "millikan". — Luis W. Alvarez

The more dangerous the situation I put myself into, the more I rise, the better I become. — Eddie Alvarez

I think a good actor will always know the character better than anybody. — Fede Alvarez

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money. — Al Alvarez

But baby, you started this." The hand on her hip tugged her closer, her inner thighs brushing against the smooth fabric pulled taut over his long legs.
She tugged at the fingers on her hip, wriggling at the same time, desperate to escape. "And now I'm ending it."
"I'll decide where it ends," he said. — Tracey Alvarez

There's always a tone that you have to hit right in horror. With the blood, you want to make sure that it makes sense all along. — Fede Alvarez

We hadn't lost morale. But when you fight for four quarters, it's tough to always bounce back. The offense kept us in the game the last two weeks and to get out with a win feels really good. — Barry Alvarez

Suicide creates his own society: to shut yourself off from other people in some dingy, rented box and stare, like Melville's Bartleby, day in and day out at the dead wall outside your window is in itself a rejection of the world which is said to be rejecting you. It is a way of saying, like Bartleby, 'I prefer not to' to every offer and every possibility, which is a condition no amount of social engineering will cure. — Al Alvarez

She was not so easily fooled. "Fell, huh?" she asked, pricking her ears. "I was trying to fly," said Star. The gray mare nodded. "Would you like Sweetroot to take a look at it? She may have some medicine to heal it." "No. It's fine." Sweetroot was Sun Herd's medicine mare, and Star saw her often enough as it was. Each morning she rubbed a mixture of marigold and comfrey across the torn ends of his wings. — Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi. — Luis Walter Alvarez

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade. — Al Alvarez

She was attempting to flirt with him, in hopes he'd put in a good word for her with Captain Alvarez. Lost cause, Cadence, I thought. Flirting with a guy who has a boyfriend was unlikely to yield positive results. — Sophie Davis

It's always gratifying to hear from a passionate reader, and as a longtime educator, I'm especially pleased and heartened when that reader is a young student who is inspired to write me and let me know that my book has helped him or her find her way. — Julia Alvarez

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on. — Julia Alvarez

The look he shot his sister could've given her a free chemical peel. — Tracey Alvarez

I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle. — Julia Alvarez

I love just about every aspect of the filmmaking except acting. I would never be able to do that, but the rest I really enjoy. — Fede Alvarez

For the artist himself art is not necessarily therapeutic; he is not automatically relieved of his fantasies by expressing them. Instead, by some perverse logic of creation, the act of formal expressions may simply make the dredged-up material more readily available to him. — Al Alvarez

I don't like to say bad things about paleontologists, but they're not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors. — Luis Walter Alvarez

There's a reason people use CGI: it's cheaper and faster. I hate that. — Fede Alvarez

Chase is playing escort this morning. He gets cranky if we keep him waiting too long."

"We wouldn't want the man with the Taser to get cranky. — Amanda E. Alvarez

I was the only woman fooling around with a camera in the streets and all the reporters laughed at me. So I became a fighter. — Lola Alvarez Bravo

Her stomach looped into a series of reef knots, each growing tighter the closer her steps carried her into the center of town. — Tracey Alvarez

Maybe because I'm a child of the '80s, but for me, a sequel is a story that follows the previous one, and sometimes if you haven't seen the original, then you don't understand the second one. Like 'Back to the Future 2.' If you haven't seen the first one, you're not going to get anything out of 'Back to the Future 2.' — Fede Alvarez

Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision. — Julia Alvarez

There is no end to what can be said about the world — Julia Alvarez

It's like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I'm stitching the scraps back together. — Julia Alvarez

But in a tournament, you can be said in for all your money at any point so you can't make any mistakes so you have to, it's all about where you're sitting at the table. — Al Alvarez