Quotes & Sayings About Arcs

When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. — Ambrose Bierce

They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it. — Gracie Allen

This is the trouble with real-life story arcs: the happiness is so rarely saved for the end. — Richard Glover

Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently? — Flann O'Brien

What decisions would you make differently today if you knew you would most likely live to be 150? How would you think about your 50s or 60s? How would you evaluate your career arcs or investments or even the area in which you live? — Peter Diamandis

Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years.
"But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none."
That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.
We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale. — Derek Sivers

Storytellers tell stories, of course, but they aren't alone in doing so. The dawn tells a story; so does the sun as it arcs across the sky; so does the sunset. The seasons tell a complex story. The fall of an acorn and the growth of an oak tree tell a story. A farmer's plow and the furrows in a field tell a story as well. Even the waves crashing on a beach tell a story. How easy to see, then, that an ax tells a story, too, at least while it hangs for a moment in the air just before descending onto your neck. That story is: Now you die. — Edward Myers

Because of streaming, serialized television has become less of a dirty word when you're pitching shows. I had to fight for that for so long as someone who's always gravitated towards ongoing story lines with characters that evolved and changed and storylines that continued over longer arcs. — Jason Katims

The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore employee. That process is called word of mouth. Savvy publishers understand its power and try to facilitate its effect with advance reading copies (ARCs), samplers, first chapters circulated by e-mail, Web sites and the like. — Donald Maass

I am a big proponent of character arcs that show us how people change over time. — Annalee Newitz

If you watch the arcs of so many comedians, at some point, they just become themselves. — Judd Apatow

Our sense of a composition largely inheres in how we feel about the individual parts; narrative arcs are almost always essential in drama but (unless there are lyrics involved) often less essential in music. All of this is, I suspect, again symptomatic of human memory limitations. We live, to a remarkable degree, in the present; what happened thirty seconds ago is already rapidly fading from our memory (or at least rapidly becomes harder for us to retrieve). — Gary F. Marcus

I like to work with multiple sections because they lend themselves to the structure of the poem: its intensifications and arcs and closures. I feel like working with smaller units feels more natural to the way I write poems. — Anna Journey

Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers. — Alexia Casale

Edmund jumped and somersaulted in midair, vaulting neatly onto the roof of the carriage. As he did so, he drew weapons from the concealing folds of his garments: the two whips he had spoken of before, arcs of sizzling light against the night sky. He wielded them with cutting precision, their light waking golden fire in his tousled hair and casting a glow on his carved features, and by that light Magnus saw his face changed from a laughing boy's to the stern countenance of an an angel. — Cassandra Clare

Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along the mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. — N.D. Wilson

My character on 'The Good Wife' is a smaller character, and his story arcs are typically season-long, unless it's a big episode for him. His transitions take place over many, many hours. — Graham Phillips

In the Open Circuit, characters are supposed to have 'arcs,' where they grow and evolve over the course of the story.
But Mom always thought that was nonsense. — Brian K. Vaughan

In October 1941, Mahilue became teh first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were killed. A German (Austrian) policeman wrote to his wife of his feelings and experiences shooting the city's Jews in the first days of the month. 'During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, and infants. I kept in mind that I have two infants at home, whom these hordes would treat just the same, if not ten times worse. The death that we gave them was a beautiful quick death, compared to the hellish torments of thousands and thousands in the jails of the GPU. Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight, before their bodies fell into the pit and into the water.'
pp. 205-206 — Timothy Snyder

He could tell at once that they carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with the water though it wasn't bubble bath as Harry had ever experienced. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that Harry thought it would have supported his weight if he'd cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water. Harry amused himself for a while turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs. — J.K. Rowling

It's a long arc and a long storyline, and I think it leaves us in a great place to see how we interact again, whether that be for The Defenders, Jessica Jones Season 2, or whatever. We'll see. I don't know. — Mike Colter

No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks. — Hanya Yanagihara

I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There's a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I'm always processing things, so I don't sleep. — Tatiana Maslany

I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy, and one of my specializations was the logic and mathematics of game theory. I've also got a degree in drama, so I know about stories, characterizations, plot arcs, and the like. Lots of game designers can do one or the other: I've got the skills for both. — Brendan Myers

ROSE: I seriously have the DUMBEST arc anyone could conceivably imagine.
DAVE: rose we dont have fuckin "arcs" we are just human beings — Andrew Hussie

Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold
Spun of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying
Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, Or soaring to luminous amethyst Over the steeples aureoled. — Lola Ridge

A coherent text is a designed object: an ordered tree of sections within sections, crisscrossed by arcs that track topics, points, actors, and themes, and held together by connectors that tie one proposition to the next. Like other designed objects, it comes about not by accident but by drafting a blueprint, attending to details, and maintaining a sense of harmony and balance. — Steven Pinker

I've been looking to do TV for a while. I've always done guest starring stuff. I've done a couple of multi-episode arcs, and I've always loved the experience. — Christina Ricci

Your Joan of Arcs and Supermans don't come around too often. Mostly, the world is made up of people like me, plodding along. It's what most people do - plod, plod, plod. While it kills me to come to grips with the fact that I'm like everyone else, that pain is outweighed by the comfort I get from being a member of the human race. — Douglas Coupland

I can't really write anything without knowing the ending. I don't know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can't structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint. — Jeff Lemire

People say that you want to be varied in your career, and I've done so many things and am very appreciative. But, the one thing I've never done and wanted to do was to be a regular on a TV show, where you get 22 weeks of the year to develop and play a character. I've done arcs of five or eight episodes on shows, but I'd like to have a character that's rich enough and deep enough to want to explore and live with for a few years. Playing the same character, but doing different scenes seems very exciting to me. — Jim Piddock

That's the great truth of failed relationships, the narrative and the absence of narrative. Each time you tell the story, it makes less sense, the smooth arcs disintegrate into a series of jagged peaks. As you stand on one of its precipices, you can no longer see the way forward. How did you traverse from one point to another? How did you make the journey safely? — Stephanie Reents

Maybe some of my quest for success comes from Joan of Arc but theres no conscious part of Catholicism in my life. — Joan Van Ark

Never miss an opportunity to be truly and deeply humiliated! The shame will carve you down to an individual of exquisite layering, and in the process, etch within you the arcs of exceptional narrative. — Ashim Shanker

Most games follow a real railroad plot, no matter what you want, you're following their storyline to its unavoidable conclusion. I'd like to write a game where your character can follow any number of possible story arcs and sub-plots. — Patrick Rothfuss

People don't have these tidy little redemption arcs in reality the way they do in movies. — Diablo Cody

Everything seemed to grow blacker as I sat there, except for the fireflies whose tiny pulsing lights drew arcs through the dark summer air. On off . . . on off . . . on off . . . on off. The longer I stared, the dizzier I got, until I felt as if the world was tipping and pitching me forward down the mountainside into the long throat of the night. — Ruth Ozeki

ferryman's hefty Africans pace short reciprocating arcs on the deck, sweeping and shoveling the black water of the Charles Basin with long stanchion-mounted oars, minting systems of vortices that fall to aft, flailing about one another, tracing out fading and flattening conic sections that Sir Isaac could probably work out in his head. The Hypothesis of Vortices is pressed with many difficulties. The sky's a matted reticule of taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks. Gusts make the anchored ships start and jostle like nervous horses hearing distant guns. — Neal Stephenson

In a weird way, I think I'm much better at oneshots than longform. So I try to focus on five or six-issue arcs. I have a real fondness for the one-shots because that's where I do my best storytelling. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

Paralysis seems to happen on the steepest slope of the survival arc - where almost all hope is lost, when escape seems impossible, and when the situation is unfamiliar to the extreme. — Amanda Ripley

Today's tangents will become tomorrow's arcs, and unforeseen connections will tie up your loose ends in a way that will make you want to slap your head and holler at your accidental brilliance. — Chris Baty

After we map out all the main characters' individual arcs, using color-coded index cards, we arrange them by episode and get a rough idea of the scene order. — Bryan Cogman

It's just a bow and arrow, but it's not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, but history takes the laugh out of many things. If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, so is the sweep of disease laden dust that wipes out whole cities, so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls then thousand miles away and kills a million people. — Clifford D. Simak

I was Paul Schrader's assistant for six months before I went to film school, and he's very much about knowing what's going to happen on every page before you even start writing dialogue - the entire plot and character arcs are mapped out. — Jonathan Levine

The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less. — Cormac McCarthy

Was he angry? Was he hungry? The shifting theories of the police were ominous and tantalizing - what could attack so brutally, yet so carefully, that the evidence pointed to both man and beast? I imagined swift claws and bright teeth slashing through moonlight and flesh, sending arcs of blood high onto the wall behind. — Dan Wells

For a long while, he sat on the steps and sharpened the chain-saw blade with a round file, dipping it in bar-and-chain oil and raking it over each tooth with sleek, grating sounds. He lost himself in the rhythm of the labor. A victory over tears is a small thing, but it was his. The sky went from indigo to blackness, and he saw nothing ominous in it, nothing but cold stars wheeling in their course, a course determined by the same firm hand he hoped was guiding his own. But satellites, too, crossed the sky in sly, winking arcs. Sull knew that. He could not let himself be confounded. He went inside, to sleep beside his wife. — Matthew Neill Null

There arc no such things as desperate situations. Only desperate men. — Adolf Hitler

I don't for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else. — Nathalie Sarraute

From the rugged cliffs of Cape Liptrap peninsula jutting bravely into the swells of Bass Strait, the coast arcs southeast, hugging the waters of Waratah Bay with sweeping flat lines of fine pale sand and knotty scrub. — Tim Cope

Just for fun I flew in huge banking arcs, taking deep breaths, enjoying the feel of my newly weightless hair. The stylist had called it "wind tossed."
If only she knew. — James Patterson

I feel very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama ... I feel really excited that, at last, the novel has found its on-screen equivalent, because the emotional arcs and changes that you can follow are just so much more like a novel, and so many amazing shows recently have done as much as film can do to show the interior world. — Eleanor Catton

He kissed her, and the magic that had been building up steadily around them exploded, raining down in arcs of silver fire that made her half-remember a prophecy from her dreams.
One by one, they all will die.
Something had been set into motion. — Nenia Campbell

In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn. — Catherynne M Valente

Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor ... great scarlet arcs of silk ... saffron ... green ... crimson ... and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and the infinite ... and along the lower rim of beauty lay the hard harsh line of the hills ... — John Coldstream

When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she'd thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color. A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.
"Why magnesium?" she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal. His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. "Because it's beautifully explosive, just like my X. — Nalini Singh

Her honey-coloured hair fell in heavy wavesbelow her shoulders and as she stared up at him her eyes, clear, speckled amber, seemed to tilt at the corners; her brows were black and swept up in arcs, and she had thick black lashesh. There was about her a kind of warm luxuriance, something immediately suggestive to the men of pleasurable fulfillment- something for which she was not responsible but of which she was acutely conscious. — Kathleen Winsor

Terror builds inside him. The reality that tonight will be his last leaves a sour taste in his mouth. The Tainted will eat him, or on a more terrifying note - if that's even possible - maybe turn him into one of them. He'd rather die. But first, he'll take as many of those bastards out as he can. He throws his pack into the throng and jerks the blade from his belt. With a thudding heart, he slices through them. Blood arcs over him, onto him. — Laura Kreitzer

I definitely have character arcs in mind for each character unless I kill them. — Robert Kirkman

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none. — Kurt Vonnegut

Being in the industry, I've seen many situations where someone will get the call from the network where they say 'You guys have 5 episodes to wrap it up.' Then all your long-term story arcs gotta get wrapped up in five episodes because that's how many episodes you got left. I would hate to see that happen to 'Castle'. — Nathan Fillion

Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity. — Dean Koontz

first seek ye the kingdom of pure practical intelligence

shreds of posters and headlines
shards of gramophone records feathers

lights shining arcs
the well-lit borders

when the rush-hour comes
and the hour of the pile-up
and the sounds of breaking steel-plate and people
are heard in the dark

when the journey is broken, no one is on the right road — Pentti Saarikoski

I look for an interesting and often times, fresh character. Something different that what is done all the time or than I've done recently. I look at who is directing. Those two variables as well as a third, which is the content and the quality of the screenplay. I look at the arcs of the scenes and characters and relationships. — William Baldwin

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

By just passing through things, I continue to slightly limit myself. I want the jobs that don't say that much. I'm often the stepping stone or the conduit from one thing to another. I love the idea of existing in a film and growing and having bigger arcs, and being in scenes where you're just being, as opposed to talking. That' one of my ambitions, lying ahead. — Gavin Rossdale

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

Crime is one of the leads of the show. If there's ever anything that deals with a character's personal life, you don't have to worry about it getting too crazy. People don't have to worry about character arcs. Each episode is a self-contained unit. — Christopher Meloni

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. — Robert Browning

Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras. — Barry Ritholtz

Daniel Ziskind had once learned that time is created through deeds of true kindness. Days and hours and years are not time, but merely vessels for it, and too often they are empty. The world stands still, timeless and empty, until an act of generosity changes it in an instant and sends it soaring through arcs of rich seasons, moment after spinning moment of racing beauty. And then, with a single unkind deed, a single withheld hand, time ceases to exist. — Dara Horn

Such narrative arcs make good movies but shitty existences. — David Mitchell

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife.
And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain. — Adrian McKinty

We are living in complex, difficult times and I wanted Syriana to reflect this complexity in a visceral way, to embrace it narratively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and there are no easy answers. The characters do not have traditional character arcs; the stories don't wrap up in neat little life lessons, the questions remain open. The hope was that by not wrapping everything up, the film will get under your skin in a different way and stay with you longer. This seemed like the most honest reflection of this post 9-11 world we all find ourselves in. — Stephen Gaghan

PREPARE FOR LANDING PREPARE FOR LANDING, TRACK 1 The seat belt sign is illuminated The flight attendants beyond frustrated The passengers are drunk and frayed A baby's screaming in seat 16A Another flight from here to where? Crammed in a sardine can with not enough air We're on the map, I know that much But the directions I really need are in your touch Prepare for landing, says the captain As the plane arcs down to the looming horizon Ushering us onto some foreign soil I touch the ground, and see your smile Up and down, and down and up Cokespritebeerpretzelspeanuts As we careen through empty sky It feels like nothing but you and I Prepare for landing, says the captain Out the window, the sun is setting Hand in mine, you give a squeeze You're all the home I'll ever need — Gayle Forman

The Eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are never lazy. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharine the Seconds, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamour, and desperation. If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of domestic molehills; and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with Mrs Jones about the shape of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the nosier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

I'm a firm believer in stories with arcs and beginnings and endings and all that. 'Scott Pilgrim' is sort of one long novel, and it's so long that I get confused and sort of tread water sometimes. But there's definitely a goal to it. People who just dismiss it as shallow, that's their prerogative, but it's not really my intent. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

When I first starting conceiving series like 'Courtney,' 'Polly,' 'How Loathsome,' etc., I was shooting for closed story-arcs but open-ended concepts. Then I started realizing I was committing myself to potentially endless series. — Ted Naifeh

Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do; they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I think what's fun about the Western genre is the character arcs are very strong and, arguably, more interesting and exciting than the action that is metaphorically representational of those arcs. — Jon Favreau

I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself. — Charles De Gaulle

One day a man came to watch him work on a painting he was doing of Jesus and his disciples. The man sat there all day, and Leonardo only made one stroke the whole time. 'You stood there all day and only made one stroke,' the man said. Leonardo just looked at him. 'Yeah, but it was the right stroke,' he said." Dan sat quietly for a second. I was not sure if he was angry or if he didn't see the relevance of the analogy. Then, all of a sudden, he burst out laughing. "That's pretty good, Nerburn," he said. He reached over and pushed me playfully. "What was that guy's name?" "Leonardo da Vinci." "I've got to remember that. Leonardo Duvishhi. You sure he wasn't an Indian?" "Might have been Wapashaw's long-lost uncle," I said. Dan laughed heartily. "This is a good day, Nerburn. I'm glad you came to visit me." The hawk cut great arcs against the towering sky. The eastern horizon was filling with pinks and lavenders. "So am I, Dan," I said. "It's been too long. — Kent Nerburn

On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order. — Jonathan Tropper

Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it. — Mark Twain

How soon things changed and how low people fell and from what heights. Even those whom he thought untouchable. Or perhaps, especially those. It was as if there were two invisible arcs: with our deeds and words we ascended; with our deeds and words we descended. — Elif Shafak

She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North. — Philip Pullman

On the edge of a tropical ocean, in a thousand reflections of the silver light of an invisible moon, among undulations of restless waters, ceaselessly changing ...
Among silent breakers, the tremors of the shining surface, in the swift flux and reflux martyrizing the patches of light, in the rendings of luminous loops and arcs, and lines, in the occultations and reappearances of dancing bursts of light being decomposed, recomposed, contracted, spread out, only to be re-distributed once more before me, with me, within me, drowned, and unendurably buffeted, my calm violated a thousand times by the tongues of infinity, oscillating, sinusoidally overrun by the multitude of liquid lines. enormous with a thousand folds, I was and I was not, I was caught, I was lost, I was in a state of complete ubiquity. The thousands upon thousands of rustlings were my own thousand shatterings. — Henri Michaux

No one who reads this book will remain unchanged or unaffected-Julene Bair's story arcs from the cornfields of Kansas and Nebraska to the food on our tables and the gas in our cars. There is always a price to be paid, she reminds us, for the pleasures and comforts of this day. If you read only one memoir this year, this is the one to read and pass along. — Jonis Agee

My works are a direct response to the typical space opera. I grew tired of always reading about how the people with power, with agency, get involved in huge sweeping arcs of stories. I wanted stories that dealt with real people, people I could relate to. — Nathan Lowell