Backdrop Quotes & Sayings

The mountain panorama was the backdrop to every photo taken here, the backdrop to everything. At first Ursula had thought it beautiful, now she was beginning to find its magnificence oppressive. The great icy crags and the rushing waterfalls, the endless pine trees
nature and myth fused to form the Germanic sublimated soul. German Romanticism, it seemed to Ursula, was write large and mystical, the English Lakes seemed tame by comparison. And the English soul, if it resided anywhere, was surely in some unheroic back garden
a patch of lawn, a bed of roses, a row of runner beans. — Kate Atkinson

It's great to be able to connect parents with children both emotionally and through humor. I look forward to exploring family entertainment once again and examining the specifics of our day-to-day lives against the backdrop of an extraordinary adventure. — Jon Favreau

In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life. — Milan Kundera

Upon moving to Cornwall in 1991, I became bewitched by its enchanting timeless beauty, which captured my heart and holds me still. Brooding and mysterious, the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor provided the wild backdrop against which the introduction to my magical training and love of nature began. — Carole Carlton

I think somebody who is more self-reflective should ask why they personally aren't going on that path. If amateurism is so great, why didn't you stay one? You have to look at the larger economy, a backdrop of unemployment; it's shitty out there. — Astra Taylor

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films. — Alexander Payne

He feels it as a single indescribable shape, something brailled out for him against a ground or backdrop of he knows not what, and it hurts him, in the poet's phrase, like the world hurts God. — William Gibson

I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us. — David Eagleman

But now it's the museum backdrop for the exhibition of grief. — David Levithan

There are many themes found in the Book of Psalms that are generally not found in modern music. These include the fear of God, the righteousness and justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the judgement of God, the evil of sin, spiritual and physical warfare, the arch enemies of the Christian, the destruction of the wicked, the reality of hell, the blessedness of the church, the vicious attacks upon the church, the commandments of God, the dominion of David's son, and so on. Without the backdrop of these truths, the themes of love, mercy, faith, and salvation become largely meaningless. — Kevin Swanson

There is a misconception, geocentric and anthropomorphic, common to the large majority the the earthbound, which causes them to visualize a planetary system stereoscopically. The mind's eye sees a sun, remote from a backdrop of stars, and surrounded by spinning apples
the planets. Step out on your balcony and look. Can you tell the planets from the stars? Venus you may pick out with ease, but could you tell it from Canopus, if you had not previously been introduced? That little red speck
is it Mars, or is it Antares? Blast for Antares, believing it to be a planet, and you will never live to have grandchildren. — Robert A. Heinlein

I told her, "Bring your scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and every question you have. Questions are good. Let's see what the Lord will teach us together."

...During one of our study sessions together, as she threw a steady stream of questions at me, I asked her if she was asking questions against a backdrop of faith or one of doubt. "In other words, are you saying, 'Here's something I don't understand, so the gospel must not be true.' or are you willing to say, 'Here's something I don't understand, but I wonder what the Lord or His prophets will teach us about this?'

Are your questions asked with the assumption that there are answers? Are you will to trust the Lord and give Him the benefit of the doubt? — Sheri Dew

His vision crawled with ghost hieroglyphs, translucent lines of symbols arranging themselves against the neutral backdrop of the bunker wall. He looked at the backs of his hands, saw faint neon molecules crawling beneath the skin, ordered by the unknowable code. He raised his right hand and moved it experimentally. It left a faint, fading trail of strobed afterimages. — William Gibson

I had never seen her smile before. At least, not beyond the cursory upturn at the edges of her lips as we passed each other in the hallway. But now, her smile transformed her, as if she'd grown taller, or changed her hair color, or something. Her cheeks popped with dimples, her lips seemed redder and softer against the backdrop of her white teeth. Damn. She was cute. — Allen Eskens

I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision. — Lydia Lunch

If you don't like the scene you're in, if you're unhappy, if you're lonely, if you don't feel that things are happening, change your scene. Paint a new backdrop. — Leo Buscaglia

As a king, I have specified 2 urns as my backdrop, I have drank a cold Islamic green from my goblet, I have surveyed the Moorish lanterns of Iberia, so that when I come to a stance, when I come to a wisely chosen acre of granite, I am on grounds of a new undistinguished bodily grain, a prophet increased by fore-shortened spells, by Persian miniature gladioli, roosting upon the blood of erupting lateral wheat. — Will Alexander

Wonder too ... if the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. — Ann Voskamp

Soul has been demoted to a new-age spiritual fantasy or a missionary's booty, and nature has been treated , at best, as a postcard or a vacation backdrop or, more commonly, as a hardware store or refuse heap. Too many of us lack intimacy with the natural world and with our souls, and consequently we are doing untold damage to both. — Bill Plotkin

The breathtaking inanity of the [school] Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. — John E. Jones III

Even if a life has traveled down an unproductive path, you can find your faith again; pure faith, which is loyalty to God himself. Dark seasons of trial can also become the backdrop for an even greater revelation of truth. — Beverly Crawford

They say that Nero started the fire himself because he needed a suitable backdrop for his concert. — Victor Borge

We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of ... a much more integrative experience. — Simon McBurney

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, somethingyou can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop. — Barack Obama

Juliet is one of those rare novels that has it all: lush prose, tightly intertwined parallel narratives, intrigue, and historical detail all set against a backdrop of looming danger. Anne Fortier casts a new light on one of history's greatest stories of passion. I was swept away. — Sara Gruen

A poet or prose narrator usually looks back on what he has achieved against a backdrop of the years that have passed, generally finding that some of these achievements are acceptable, while others are less so. — Eyvind Johnson

Each of us carries around those growing up places, the institutions, a sort of backdrop, a stage set. So often we act out the present against the backdrop of the past, within a frame of perception that is so familiar, so safe that is is terrifying to risk changing it even when we know our perceptions are distorted, limited, constricted by that old view. — Chandra Talpade Mohanty

If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian. — Ricky Gervais

A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz.
Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. — Chinua Achebe

Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop. — Jakob Nielsen

Fred was afraid of the night, afraid his body would slip away from him, dissolve in that purple velvet with diamond eyes, the tropical night. The tropical night did not lie inert, like a painted movie backdrop, but was filled with whisperings, and seemed to have arms like the foliage.
Beauty was a drug. The small beach shone like mercury at their feet. — Anais Nin

The artist has the power to signoff the work by deconstructing the work itself: I've finished this work now and I'll sign it and relegate the painting to simply something that services my signature. The painting becomes the colorful backdrop of the signature. — Gavin Turk

The grey wall to the right of me had my unfocused eyes attention. The blandness of all four walls and the concrete flooring created a backdrop for my imagination to run wild. Like a blink screen just waiting for a film to start, this bare and depressingly dreary decor did wonderful things for my illusions. I could lay for hours on the floor, staring at seemingly nothing while my mind whirled in a secret place where my reality could not encroach. I'd spend days on end imagining an eleven Kingdom with purple trees and sparkling sapphire oceans. Where I was a guardian of the kingdom, strong and fearless, fighting mythical creatures and villainous traitors. I received adoration from the civilians I was protecting and gratitude from royalty. In this place I was everything I wasn't in the reality. In this place I was wanted. In this place I was alive. — Roxanne Lee

Bad news is the backdrop against which the Good News really stands out. — Matt Chandler

Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all
a backdrop for the stories we must tell. — Kate Atkinson

The music is used as a backdrop. I take the kundalini and I play against the notes with it. I do a light show inwardly and outwardly with the vortexes of energy as you sit there. It's no big deal. It's just what I do. — Frederick Lenz

Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book aside. — Karen Armstrong

I think that those of us who are ordinary disappear easily into the backdrop of life and we take things for granted. We often wake up in our lives and wonder how we got there. But the characters I create, the people I am drawn to, are quite extraordinary (and not always in wholesome ways), and they offer us the chance to understand who we really are and how we became who we are. — Chris Abani

For me, the backdrop of half the experiences of life includes music. — Amy Grant

And fit, and he carried himself with a confident poise that inspired trust and respect. He gestured at one of the two seats in front of his glass-and-chrome desk and waited until I sat to settle into his Aeron chair. Against the backdrop of sky and skyscrapers, Mark looked accomplished and powerful. — Sylvia Day

Jessica stopped a few feet away so that Ken could get an optimal view of her body posed against the seductive backdrop of the sea, sand, and palm trees. — Francine Pascal

To preach the gospel is to show people their need for salvation against a backdrop of God's nature and the character of sin, and then present Jesus as the only remedy for what ails them and the world. In my weekly preaching in the worship services I always call people to believe in Christ. — Timothy Keller

My earliest memory is nursing and struggling to see the colored lights making up the map of the world, the famous backdrop for Larry King's TV show. There's an 'I-want-to-do-all-things-at-once' kind of theme to it. — Ronan Farrow

anticipated this trend in the 1950s, when it used Jackson Pollock's action paintings as the backdrop for a fashion shoot for its spring collection. For Indiana the experience was a salutary one. The wordage he utilised in his paintings had always been carefully chosen and carried great emotional resonance, much of it directly autobiographical. He was not a neutralist. He was not attempting to transform the word 'love' into a slogan or logo, but that's what happened anyway, and the effect it had on his reputation as an artist was considerable. Because of the commercial proliferation of the LOVE — Rob Chapman

'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music. — John Lydon

A conflagration always made such a nice backdrop to a battle. Fire made everything so much more joyously apocalyptic. — Stuart Hill

You can never go wrong with a nice red lip. I'm not afraid to wear it during the day or basically any time because I wear a lot of black and it's a great backdrop for it. — Crystal Renn

What is Southern California but an ever-changing dreamscape backdrop for the postmodern ideal? The psychology of the postmodern world is the continual state of change as we live in its idealist manufactured dream, built by developers. — John Van Hamersveld

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. — Paullina Simons

When I was about five my dad built a stage for me in our basement. A full stage, with a curtain, a backdrop and a dressing room. There were three colored spotlights - a red one, a white one, and a blue one. Blue was for nighttime scenes, and red was for when we were in hell. If the neighborhood kids wanted to use the stage, they had to incorporate me into the play. — Paul Reubens

Writing is the way I make sense of a chaotic world. I see the tumultuous backdrop of humanity around me, and I feel it is my duty (mainly to myself) to create a sense of meaning and understanding in such an atmosphere. It's all about timing. In a world without order, I create order. Sequence and structure, even in the busiest of places, allow me to be at peace. — Leigh Hershkovich

The desert ... may serve better as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes ... both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself. — Richard Misrach

Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history. — Diane Ackerman

I'd like to change the depictions of life, love, and adventure under what's known as the typical, overused backdrop of Hollywood. — Romany Malco

I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years. — Walter Dean Myers

To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. — Junichiro Koizumi

The setting, concerns, and mood of The Woodlanders are consonant with the Wessex of the earlier novels. There is an element of nostalgia in Hardy's treatment of the woodlands of Little Hintock. Although such rural economies were very much alive in Hardy's day, he strikes an elegiac note in his evocation of a world that will inevitably pass away. However, the woodlands do not form the backdrop to an idyllic pastoral of humanity living in tranquil harmony with nature. The trees, which are such a dominant presence in the novel, compete with each other for nourishment and light, are vulnerable to disease and damage, and are frightening in their moaning under the lash of the storm. The woodlands represent the Darwinian struggle for existence that Hardy sees as extending not only to the inhabitants of this little world but also beyond ... — Geoffrey Harvey

Formula One has been the backdrop of my life. — Tamara Ecclestone

To identify a person as a Southerner suggests not only that her history is inescapable and formative but that it is also impossibly present. Southerners live uneasily at the nexus between myth and reality, watching the mishmash amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, graciousness, and renegade defiance play out against a backdrop of profligate physical beauty. — Sally Mann

All my adult life, there was the Troubles. That was the backdrop of my life. — James Nesbitt

Poor Hollywood! These things happen all over the world but what a great backdrop to have Hollywood in our movie. No, but I know people who divorce a lot ... and have really nice houses. But I didn't model the character on anyone in particular. And if I did, I would never tell the name. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

There are people who have no engaged conversation with the land whatsoever, no sense of its beauty or extremes or limits and therefore no reason to question their actions in a place that is merely backdrop. — Ellen Meloy

Mags seemed to attract trouble wherever she went. The Raploch Estate in Stirling was a nice backdrop, a middleclass place to live and bring up your kids until the scourge of drugs took a grip of its sons and daughters, like any other quiet township. The more the people needed drugs, the rougher and more violent the place became. — Stephen Richards

The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels. — Robert Harris

Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored. Society ends up containing a range of unbalanced groups, each hungering to sate its particular psychological deficiency, forming the backdrop against which our frequently heated conflicts about what is beautiful plays themselves out. — Alain De Botton

There's a kind of activism that's more about bolstering identity than achieving results, one that sometimes seems to make the left the true heirs of the Puritans. Puritanical in that the point becomes the demonstration of one's own virtue rather than the realization of results. And puritanical because the somber pleasure of condemning things is the most enduring part of that legacy, along with the sense of personal superiority that comes from pleasure denied. The bleakness of the world is required as contrasting backdrop to the drama of their rising above. — Rebecca Solnit

A funny thing happens when more than one knitter gathers in a public place. A solo knitter, presuming she is a woman, quickly fades into the backdrop like a potted palm or a quietly nursing mother. ... A single knitter is shorthand for "nothing to see here, move on."

But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren't used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator. — Clara Parkes

Ballet for a rainy day Silent film of melting miracle play Dancing out there through my window To the backdrop of a slow descending grey — Andy Partridge

Would you like to see where I will build your house, m'lady?"
She grinned. "You mean our house?"
He mirrored her smile. "Aye."
Taking her hand, he led her along the path to the mouth of the River Coe. They stood on a curved peninsula high above the river where it would be free from floods. Hugh spread his arms wide and looked across Loch Leven. "The hills of Glencoe will be our backdrop, the river of the Coe will be our music, and our galleys will sail through the water of the Leven to Loch Linnhe and out to sea. Mark me, my love, Clan Iain Abrach will rebuild, and will once again rule these lands."
He looked into her eyes and saw joy there. "And you will be my queen. — Amy Jarecki

The reading of the song is vital. The written word is first always ... first. Not belittling the music, but it really is a backdrop. To convey the meaning of a song you need to look at the lyric and understand it. — Frank Sinatra

I'm looking forward to locking swords with Douglas Henshall and working against the stunning backdrop of Shetland. I came to Scotland a lot in the 70s and 80s in various theatre productions and of course to film Hallam Foe but this is the furthest I've ever been. — Ciaran Hinds

In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things
love, fashion shows, and revolution. — Jeanine Basinger

Don't the overwhelming majority believe that mankind is the crowning achievement of Creation, that man is better than everything, even things we haven't yet investigated? And don't those people who aren't able to escape the bonds of their own ego think that the entire Universe, even the countless worlds of outer space, is just a backdrop for this ego? And yet it might be quite different. — Adalbert Stifter

In most novels, the landscape, or the place, in which the story takes part is simply a backdrop to the human action. — Paul Kingsnorth

...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book asie. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with others lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever. — Karen Armstrong

It's always more interesting to make a movie about what is relevant in your society. What's the political global backdrop? What are our threats? What are we vulnerable to? Because that's what an audience vibes on - that is what people are interested in, universally. — Gerard Butler

At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator's tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over-familiar banality of private life. — Milan Kundera

To be afraid is the condition of loving knowledge. Were I not dying of fear, I'd not know how to exist myself, I wouldn't get the notices of existence, I wouldn't record with delight the miniscule passage of a blue tit, its wing dipped in gold on the dusk. Were I not dying of sorrow I wouldn't with nostalgia be present at the creation of the world, the squirrel nuptials this morning I wouldn't care. Creatures are born to a backdrop of adieux. — Helene Cixous

Setting is the bedrock of your story. If you choose a real-world backdrop, be certain you get your facts straight. — Lynn Flewelling

The past is a presence between us. In all my mother does and says, the past continually discloses itself in the smallest ways. She sees it directly; I see its shadow. Still, it pulses in my fingertips, feeds on my consciousness. It is a backdrop for each act, each drama of our lives. I have absorbed a sense of what she has suffered, what she has lost, even what her mother endured and handed down. It is my emotional gene map. — Fern Schumer Chapman

The planetary perspective provides a kind of out of body experience for us - hovering in orbit and watching ourselves sleepwalk through a slow disaster of our own making. Now, can this experience help us to shake ourselves awake? For virtually all of its history Earth has evolved without us, and we have always seen ourselves as autonomous actors on a passive planetary backdrop. But now we are beginning to see that our futures - those of humanity and of planet Earth - are tightly conjoined. If human civilization is to persist and thrive we will need a completely different view of our planet, and of ourselves, in which we acknowledge both our deep dependence and our increasing influence. — David Grinspoon

Aamir, recalling back to the idyllic days of his college youth, pictured himself once again sitting quietly on a familiar neighbourhood rooftop. He often enjoyed relaxing there, alone or with friends, while watching the colourful fluttering prayer flags on rooftop poles, especially in the warmth of an early evening breeze, as wispy clouds drifted against the jagged Himalayan backdrop. He has oft times wondered, ever since his childhood, if the prayers to the spirits of the dead, flying out from those slowly tattering rags, will ever really be answered. Perhaps it will be in another place, in another time, when we're living another life that we shall finally know. Aamir had calmly thought at the time. He was that sort of philosophical guy. — Andrew James Pritchard

We are essentially in the business of telling stories. We would like to think that most of our stories are basically human stories with sports as a backdrop. — Bryant Gumbel

Many a fine SF story uses science or technology merely as backdrop. Many a fine SF story presumes a technological breakthrough and explores its implications without attempting to predict how the thing might actual work. — Edward M. Lerner

Maybe it was possible that you could take someone out of their life and drop them in the middle of another place entirely and they could seem like someone completely different. But even if that were the case, she thought, it wasn't really 'they' change - it was just the backdrop, the circumstances, the cast of characters. Just because you painted a house didn't mean the furniture inside was any different. It had to be the same with people. Deep down, at the very core, they'd still be the same no matter where they were, wouldn't they? — Jennifer E. Smith

Against the backdrop of people who avoid work, cut corners, and do half-hearted jobs, a diligent man stands out. Practicing diligence is an excellent way to stand out for Christ at home, in the workplace, and even at church. Today, complete each one of your tasks, however big or small, with diligence. — David Jeremiah

I love fantasy woven through the backdrop of realty. — E.B. Hood

I love the idea of a beautiful neighborhood that represents the very best of American values, but also as a fun backdrop to some darker, deliciously sneaky things going on in people's lives. — Marc Cherry

The crowds were just crying out, "Crucify him, crucify him" with unified rage and intent. And in the backdrop of this rejection of the Son of God, the New Testament Church was beginning to form and write letters to encourage each other in the faith. — Greg Gordon

The Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail is unlike any other performance venue in the world, set with mountains and trees as a backdrop. — Damian Woetzel

Because all men are but reflections of their upbringing, education, and experiences, we also expend considerable effort scrutinizing both the man and the general who led the Army of Northern Virginia north that summer. Robert E. Lee was trained as an engineer at West Point, studied extensively the campaigns of the Great Captains of military history, and learned the art of command and maneuver at the elbow of General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. The aggregate of these experiences had a profound and demonstrable influence on his generalship. It is against this backdrop of education and experience that Lee's decisions during the Gettysburg Campaign must be examined, understood, and judged. — Scott Bowden

The insomnia I am talking about results from a mild state of possession, harmless to those around you, who sometimes even fail to notice it. It usually comes when you are completely engrossed in your work and overtakes you so completely that every aspect of your daily life becomes mechanical and provides only a colorless backdrop to action occurring only in your mind. It matters not whether at this time you are asleep or awake. The secret life pulses within you, and when you wake in the middle of the night you realize there is no way to stem its flow. — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next? — J.G. Ballard

The institution of monarchy developed during the Middle Ages against the backdrop of the previously endemic struggles between feudal power agencies. The monarchy presented itself as a referee, aa power capable of putting an end to war, violence, and pillage and saying no to these struggles and private feuds. It made itself acceptable by allocating itself a juridical and negative function, albeit one whose limits it naturally began at once to overstep. — Michel Foucault

The big top deflating symbolized death. The end of another round of shows. The last part of the life of this big top. The same big top would be reborn in another city. It would rise into the air, like the phoenix, but it would never be like this tent, with its backdrop and its smells and its winds. — Sarah Noffke

Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played. It was what I used to do through long evenings. Never mornings even to one so self-indulgent, it seems slightly sinful to wake up and immediately sit down with a book and afternoons only now and then. In daylight I would pay what I owed the world. Reading was the reward, a solitary, obscure, nocturnal reward. It was what I got everything else (living) out of the way in order to do. Now the lack was taking its toll. I was having withdrawal symptoms. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The debate that has been conducted in terms of "creation versus evolution" has gotten caught up with all kinds of other debates, and this has provided a singularly unhelpful backdrop to the would-be serious discussion of other parts of the Bible. — N. T. Wright

I cried, sitting by her bed, and I told her the story of us. "It's about the feed," I said. "It's about this meg normal guy, who doesn't think about anything until one wacky day, when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold." I said, "Set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it's the high-spirited story of their love together, it's laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming, and a visual feast." I picked up her hand and held it to my lips. I whispered to her fingers. "Together, the two crazy kids grow, have madcap escapades, and learn an important lesson about love. They learn to resist the feed. Rated PG-13. For language," I whispered, "and mild sexual situations. — M T Anderson

Adele and Vladimir danced along the banks of the River Seine, the loveliness of spring a backdrop all around them. — Kristy Cambron