Arc Quotes & Sayings

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. — Charles Bukowski

Some actors - myself included - like to know where your character's going: you like to know what the arc is for the character so that you can plan where you're going to give beats for this, that, and the other and give the audience what they want. But on 'Homeland,' you do the opposite. — Raza Jaffrey

Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth. — Joan Of Arc

Tom and I sit on a bench in the garden to watch the moon melt in an arc below the horizon as fast as ice on a warm hand before we can call the others to witness its exit. — Marion Coutts

Not only these were new kinds of stories, they were being told with a new kind of formal structure. [...] The result was a storytelling architecture you could picture as a colonnade - each episode a brick with its own solid, satisfying shape, but also part of a season-long arc that, in turn, would stand linked to other seasons to form a coherent, freestanding work of art. [...] The new structure allowed huge creative freedom: to develop characters over long stretches of time, to tell stories over the course of fifty hours or more, the equivalent of countless movies. — Brett Martin

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice. — Martin Luther King Jr.

In every take, that you're not sure of what they're going to cut and paste together and what the arc or the purpose or the intention of your character's journey will be in the story. You don't have control. Sometimes that's wonderful, and sometimes that can be scary. — Shannyn Sossamon

[Before being burned at the stake for her faith:] Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames. — Joan Of Arc

We need merely understand that the evolutionary process is neither random nor determined but creative. It follows the general pattern of all creativity. While there is no way of fully understanding the origin moment of the universe we can appreciate the direction of evolution in its larger arc of development as moving from lesser to great complexity in structure and from lesser to greater modes of consciousness. We can also understand the governing principles of evolution in terms of its three movements toward differentiation, inner spontaneity, and comprehensive bonding. — Thomas Berry

Why do you like show jumping?"
" ... Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It's really the ultimate test of two nervous systems
the kinetic transfer of the rider's muscle to the horse's muscle enables them to clear those jumps. And there's nothing like it
horse and rider forming an arc of beauty, efficiency, and power, like a double helix."
"DNA,"
"Yes, DNA, the code to life. — Ainslie Sheridan

It's a real challenge to complete a story arc and end up with a cool punchline in 120 characters. — Mark Hoppus

Sometimes there's a general arc that you want to try and get better the longer you do something. — Colin Hay

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. — Peter Dube

Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase. — Saint-John Perse

Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first ... You can't do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end. — Elizabeth George

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.

Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity. — Craig Hallam

The second reason for the failure of industrial agriculture is its wastefulness. In natural or biological systems, waste does not occur. And it is easy to produce examples of nonindustrial human cultures in which waste was or is virtually unknown. All that is sloughed off in the living arc of a natural cycle remains within the cycle; it becomes fertility, the power of life to continue. In nature death and decay are as necessary - are, one may almost say, as lively - as life; and so nothing is wasted. There is really no such thing, then, as natural production; in nature, there is only reproduction. But — Wendell Berry

As a people, our monuments never commemorate victories. They commemorate the names of the fallen. We don't need the Arc de Triomphe; we have Masada, Tel-Hai, and the Warsaw Ghetto - where the battle was lost, but the war of Jewish existence was won. — David Elazar

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. — G.K. Chesterton

There are times in life when sugar turns into medicine. This was one of those times. — Ilona Andrews

After 'Prom Night' I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That's the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices. — Brittany Snow

Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that's a cinematic arc. — James Cameron

With my personal work I prefer not to work from storyboards because being a director, producer and animator in one person I don't have to communicate my idea to anyone else, I can keep the feeling of the story, the story arc and structure in my head. — Signe Baumane

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing. — Joan Of Arc

Alhamdulillah can be seen in the phenomenon of the arc of ascent and descent, how everything returns to the source, and how boundless gratitude from the source flows into all of creation. Subhanallah offers us the image of swimming around the central still point in spiraling circles of light. All beings and all realms of being constantly circumambulate and interpenetrate that heart center. Allahu Akbar appears to be even greater than the other two because it leads our process to go beyond concepts. The mind falls away and is led into essence. There is not a trace left of the conceptual. — Wali Ali Meyer

I used to pinch those pages closed when I read the book to keep from having to see Joan [of Arc] fail. But now I love that picture. I love it so much. I love how Joan kept going right up to the end. It reminds me that sometimes defeat is the price of taking action. If you do something, you become a target. People want to take you down. That's a risk. But it's better to do too much, better to try to hard, better to have a crisis of faith and get thrown and climb back up on your horse and keep riding, than to see something wrong in the world and not do anything at all. — Madeleine George

What I want to do is try to raise the level of SCI-Arc's original mission, which was to be forward-thinking. And let's face it, if you're forward-thinking and you're dealing in concepts of new ideas, history has told us that new ideas are not always wanted by everyone. — Neil Denari

They sat in companionable silence for a few moments after that, while the sun settled into its downward arc in the west and long shadows began to creep across the face of the city. — Scott Lynch

When I launched my first campaign in 1999, I knew that the arc of my public service would have many chapters. — Jim Matheson

I recently did a play, Athol Fugard's 'Coming Home' at Long Wharf Theatre, where I played one character throughout - I sat at a table and didn't have any costume changes. Following one character's arc from beginning to end is a whole different mindset. — Colman Domingo

I think that sharpens the intention of a scene and clarifies a story's arc. Of course, I don't seek the questions until after I've written a scene - or maybe after I've daydreamed it. — Edan Lepucki

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute — Atul Gawande

I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. — J. D. Souther

Joan of Arc is my namesake. I played her character while still in my teens, at a music festival held at the University of Colorado in Boulder. — Joan Van Ark

I rose from the bed, my heart thudding in my chest. "Kiss me," I whispered, and saw his eyebrow arc in surprise. "Just once more," I pleaded, "And I promise it will be the last time. I'll be able to forget you after that."
-Meghan — Julie Kagawa

Now I know how Joan of Arc felt. — Morrissey

Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm. — Jack Kornfield

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle. — Nicolaus Copernicus

'Female Convict 701: Scorpion' is based on a manga as is 'Lady Snowblood.' I saw 'Lady Snowblood' in the theater between writing issue three and issue four of the first arc of 'Pretty Deadly,' and I was really surprised how much I was influenced by it. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

I'm not like Jonathan Hickman, who's able to sort of plot out three years of a book ahead of time. I'm much more of a guy who plots out an arc or two at a time. — Marc Guggenheim

All of his (Nanak's) progressive thinking attained absolution at the age of 30, when he had the transcendental experience, quite similar to that of Mohammed and Joan of Arc, that was about to rock the very foundation of orthodox Hinduism in India. — Abhijit Naskar

The great thing about being an actor in a film is that you're able to start knowing exactly where you're going to finish and really paint something in between. You can work to know the arc you need to build. Whereas in television, it is open-ended, and you're constantly guessing. There are pros and cons to both. — Rose McIver

You look beautiful and tragic, just the way a heroine should on the eve of battle. Like Joan of Arc in her silver armor. — Melissa De La Cruz

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. — Mark Twain

But there are forces that don't let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don't own. — Salvador Plascencia

Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave women and men who have died trying to visit it. — Dave Barry

[a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc. — Anna Julia Cooper

The truth is that all civic and social change is friction. Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction, which is something that makes most people incredibly uncomfortable but which, for whatever reason, because of my upbringing or because of my genetics, is something that doesn't bug me. — Nick Hanauer

It makes a man feel universal, floating over the continents, seeing the rim of the world, a line as clear as a compass arc, knowing it is just a turning of the bend to Atlantic twilight, to sediment plumes and kelp beds, an island chain glowing in the dusky sea. — Don DeLillo

Evidently, rigging cables is therapy for the Swiss: or part of their theology. What was it that he used to say? A balanced arc between mountain rows / as servant to his master shows / the power of besieged belief / in something something something, something something something-something to do with ducks, or rainbows. — Mark Helprin

The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don't. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don't speak in dialogue. Their lives don't unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc. — Aaron Sorkin

Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc. — Ryan Murphy

What's great in theater is that you can sustain the arc of a character for a full three hours, whereas in film or TV, you have to create that arc in little pieces, and usually out of sequence. — Daniel Dae Kim

Not that it was a crazy complicated skill, but operating an espresso machine during high traffic could be added to my repertoire along with card tricks and how to fire a Colt .45.
(Quote taken from ARC, subject to change) — Karina Halle

When I signed onto 'Superman,' editors Matt Idelson and Wil Moss gave me a rough outline that JMS had turned in for the remaining issues of the 'Grounded' arc, which amounted to a couple of sentences for each issue, spelling out in general terms where the issue would take place geographically, specific guest stars, things like that. — Chris Roberson

Jon had seen the lie immediately for what it was: diplomacy. He had a feeling that, given the chance, Tom would hold him close every night. Instead, the first mate chose to distance himself so as not to interfere with the captain's affection for Jon. A sacrifice. — Bey Deckard

Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.' I'm no god and I'll contend no longer. — Isaac Asimov

It was the confession of a saint. -Martin Ladvenu — Susan Banfield

I miss theater. I miss living the arc of the character, from curtain to curtain, and I miss the immediate audience response. — David Anders

Speaking of August Rodin: He raised his world above us in an immense arc, and made it a part of nature. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Some people are like shooting stars. They burst through our lives in a spectacular arc, but they don't stay long. They just leave a trail. — Erica Orloff

I love the fact that there's an evolution in your understanding and the difference between the first time you play the role and last time you play the role - there's an incredible arc and that's wonderful. — Audrey Tautou

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. — Joan Of Arc

The nearer a soul is to God, the more it deserves our esteem; the closer the ties that bit it to us, the more sensible is our love for it, and the more whole-hearted should be the devotion we show in all that concerns family, country, vocation, and friendship. Thus, instead of destroying patriotism, charity exalts it, as we see in the case of St. Joan of Arc or St. Louis. — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

When you go to a great concert, you feel this arc, almost like the music of a well-chosen set takes you on this trip through emotions and through various forms of intellectual engagement. — John Green

Miya? What are you doing?"
I drop to my knees and hold my hands out to stop her.
"Murderer..." she whispers.
I shake my head, suddenly scared. "No..."
"Monster," she says, louder this time.
She swings the sword in a large arc, aiming for my head. I flinch away just as its sharp edge reaches my skin... — Dannielle Wicks

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time. — Seth

It's the same kind of preparation you do for something like this you do for anything. It doesn't matter if it's a drama or a comedy, the need to get the emotion and the character arc across is way harder in something like this so was more of a preparation. — Jessica Biel

Why is it a shame for me to cause
them to die and try to exterminate
them, tell me? You did not talk that
way when you used to come to my house
in Jeanne-d'Arc street. Ah! it is a
shame! You have not done as much,
with your cross of honor! I deserve
more merit than you, do you understand,
more than you, for I have killed more Prussians than you! — Guy De Maupassant

The L.A Trilogy is a series of three novels starring Ray, a robot detective, and his boss, a computer called Googol. Set in an alternative version of 1960s Los Angeles, each book will be more or less standalone but together will form an overarching story arc with 'Brisk Money' as the origin story. — Adam Christopher

I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper ...
The effect was one which could only be produced in ordinary parlance by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known even that of the electric arc ...
I did not think I investigated ...
I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else ... It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new something unrecorded ...
There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy.
[Describing to a journalist the discovery of X-rays that he had made on 8 Nov 1895.] — Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches. — Tatiana Maslany

I think every woman character, every female character, has her own arc. — Katheryn Winnick

We have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where we are ourselves the only constants linking yesterday to tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don't want to imply that there is by saying how much this shocked me
just that it felt so suddenly, painfully right to think that I have tapped into my Long Tale, that I have set my feet on the path I want to walk the rest of my life, and that it is a path of stories and writing and that no matter how many oceans I cross or how transient I feel in any given place, I am still on my Tale's Road, because having tapped it, having found it, the following is inevitable ... — Amal El-Mohtar

On the first day of fifth grade, Liz was sitting on the swing beside Liam's at recess. Falling and flying, her hair fanned out behind her and her eyes were closed, and that was what had caught his attention, her closed eyes. She looked a little bit silly and very much alive, and Liam couldn't stop watching.

Liz, on her part, was aware that the boy beside her was watching, but she loved swinging too much to care what he thought. She loved the wind hitting her face and the brief moment of suspension at the top of the arc and the falling sensation that was magnified by the darkness of her eyelids. She imagined that she was a bird, an angel, a wayward star.

At the height of the arc, she let go. And she flew.

Liam watched with his mouth hanging wide open, expecting her to crumple on the asphalt and die tragically before his eyes.

She didn't, and when she walked away, Liam's heart followed. — Amy Zhang

Since God had commanded it, it was necessary that I do it. Since God commanded it, even if I had a hundred fathers and mothers, even if I had been a King's daughter, I would have gone nevertheless. — Joan Of Arc

Sometimes you stop seeing what the person is to the world. You only see what the person is to you. — Jennifer Gilmore

Change isn't optional, and creation isn't something that happened a long time ago and then ended. It's ongoing, and we are invited to be a part of it. The question for us is 'what will we create in this new day?' How will we make it count? How will we nourish the things that matter, and stand in the way of injustice in the small ways that add up to the arc of history? You are invited to participate in the creation of this day ... — David LaMotte

Like all holy figures whose earthly existence separates them from the broad mass of humanity, a saint is a story, and Joan of Arc's is like no other. — Kathryn Harrison

Leave the mourning to the doves because we will never die. — John Lack

At the heart of any successful film is a powerful story. And a story should be just that: a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, powerful protagonists that audiences can identify with, and a dramatic arc that is able to capture and hold viewers' intellectual and emotional attention. — Julia Bacha

Plot is certainly a part of constructing a story. It's a factor in outlining. But believe it or not, it's the least important factor. If you focus your efforts on the Three Legs - character arc, pacing, and theme - you can change the specifics of the plot a hundred different times, and you'll still have essentially the same story. — Libbie Hawker

Only after the trial did things come into focus, that night taking on the now familiar arc. Every detail and blip made public. There are times I try to guess what part I might have played. What amount would belong to me. It's easiest to think I wouldn't have done anything, like I would have stopped them, my presence the mooring that kept Suzanne in the human realm. That was the wish, the cogent parable. But there was another possibility that slouched along, insistent and unseen. The bogeyman under the bed, the snake at the bottom of the stairs: maybe I would have done something, too. Maybe it would have been easy. — Emma Cline

I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow's going to bring. — Wentworth Miller

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother's shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course. — Helen Macdonald

It's a challenge to work a character's arc into a format in which you only have a very limited amount of time to grow and develop a character. — Ginnifer Goodwin

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession. — Jamaica Kincaid

I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards. — Cary Elwes

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style. — Charles Bukowski

By the time Joan of Arc was 16 and had proclaimed herself the virgin warrior sent by God to deliver France from her enemies, the English, she had been receiving the counsel of angels for three years. — Kathryn Harrison

If the only one who can kill an angel can't do it, then who can?'
It's a good question, one that takes me a minute to come up with an answer. 'Obadiah West can. Him and his freedom fighters. I'm just a teenager.'
'History is filled with teenagers who lead the fight. Joan of Arc. Okita Soji, the samurai. Alexander the Great. They were all teenagers when they began leading their armies. I think we're back to those times again, kid. — Susan Ee

We arc the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God. — Thomas Carlyle

Whenever a woman describes herself as a 'post-feminist' I picture women lashed to posts. Joan of Arc was an early post-feminist. — Kate Clinton

I never think about the next movie. I always think about the situation I'm in now, but you do think about an arc someone can go. I love Johnny Depp, I love 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' but I never wanted to play the same character over and over again. — Alex Pettyfer

He threw open the shutters and was silent. "There," he said, pointing to a shooting star. "Wish to stay together. Hurry." She watched the star's arc fade and wished, secure in her love's embrace. "I wish that we'll be together forever," she whispered. He pressed his lips against her ear. "I wish that we'll be together forever," he echoed. "Now it can't help but come to pass. — Lynn Kurland

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

But the observers were even more surprised by her thigh boots, black breeches, and the red leather corset she wore over a white shirt. It was a daring outfit, to say the least... She also wore a sword and rode her horse like a man. It was scandalous...
Page 37 of ARC — Pierre Pevel

You can't plan your character arc - you have a vague idea, maybe, but I'm constantly surprised. Sometimes actors in films will play the ending of the movie, or even the middle, and you know where it's going - as an audience member you can read the actor. — Evan Peters

Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school. — Maud Hart Lovelace