Exoticism Quotes & Sayings

Such are the amenities of social life, which oft makes a liar of the best of men. — Louis L'Amour

It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. — Aime Cesaire

The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. — Steven Pinker

After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to relive all these magnificent, raging memories, she became a recluse, spending entire days lying about on tiger skins, playing with those pretty Nepalese knives 'which dissipate one's dreams'. — Octave Mirbeau

Galleries in the West have probably been looking for exoticism. That's the reason my paintings initially sold well, I think. And then once they started selling, people said my works were very detailed. They may have represented something Japanese to them. — Takashi Murakami

Empty Cradle, Broken Heart is written with great awareness and sensitivity. Deborah Davis gets it just right. — Sheila Kitzinger

The reconciliation of nothing and reality and the suspension of time and space by high velocities replace the exoticism of journeys with a vast expanse of emptiness. — Paul Virilio

People attempt to create association b/n you and your values. Oh, Mary- the girl who is caring; you mean the company with quality products? — Assegid Habtewold

I liked the exoticism his travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. — Jojo Moyes

Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought. — Michael Dirda

It's a road movie [Valentine]. I mean, yes. We film it here and it takes place from basically Colorado to Louisiana. That's the road trip. So we're all over the place. We go through bits of Texas and bits of Oklahoma. — Todd Farmer

Why don't you steal the pattern out of Kenton's '23 Degrees North, 82 Degrees West'?" the trombonist, an alumnus of Stan Kenton's big band, said. — James Kaplan

Exoticism was hard to find in Pullman, Washington. — Sherman Alexie

Why, he wondered, did he have to peddle his difference for their amusement, and yet at the same time temper it, suppress it, make it suitably benign? — Leslie Parry

I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. — Chris Hedges

I argue, based on metaphysical and physical considerations, that we should think of the fundamental parts of the world as a mix of intrinsic natures, rather like a paint-pot filled with a rainbow of colors, loosely mixed to give a richly varied, spatiotemporally inseparable, spread of qualities, and that this mixture is what gives rise to ordinary reality. — L.A. Paul

Exoticism can give you an edge: it makes people assume you're cleverer than you are and gives you the upper hand. — Kristin Scott Thomas

As technology evolves, it manipulates our culture, and there's a huge opportunity to push ourselves further. I think it actually makes ourselves maybe more human, or at least human in a different way, that we can connect together in amazingly different ways and powerful new ways. — Aaron Koblin

It must be admitted that the West has reached a level of scientific mastery and outstanding specialisation. In its points of reference, this evolution commands admiration and all civilisations have to benefit from the dynamic of this rationality, as they can derive lessons from the progress achieved. "Benefiting", "deriving lessons" do not, nevertheless, mean submission. In the same way, it must be acknowledged that other civilisations and cultures propose a rich vision of the world, and that some of these have managed to preserve the basic values of life, and glimpses of their fundamental shape are beginning to be seen in the West. It is not a question of suggesting a new wave of "love for exoticism and folklore". On the contrary, it is a question of engaging in an exigent reflection about cultural specificities and possible enrichment starting from within cultures and not at their peripherals. — Tariq Ramadan

My only answer as to why the Marines get the toughest jobs is because the average Leatherneck is a much better fighter. He has far more guts, courage, and better officers... These boys out here have a pride in the Marine Corps and will fight to the end no matter what the cost."~ 2nd Lt. Richard C. Kennard, — Raphael A. Hughes

Normalization takes place not because there is Western-ideology that normalizes third-world texts in any special way (other than the usual play with exoticism) but because this academic seeks to domesticate everything, even Marx. — Aijaz Ahmad

Fashion is, perhaps by necessity, in a world of its own - one that only rarely overlaps with anything resembling real life. This fantasy and exoticism is part of its appeal, of course. — Vince Aletti

The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualising an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity. It is the inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves. — Homi K. Bhabha

- "What kind of funny?" I asked her. "Funny like a clown onstage? Or funny like a clown hanging around the entrance to a bank?"
-"The bank one. — Lemony Snicket

What does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, 'an exploration of the deserted places of my memory,' the return to nearby exoticism by way of a detour through distant places, and the 'discovery' of relics and legends: 'fleeting visions of the French countryside,' 'fragments of music and poetry,' in short, something like an 'uprooting in one's origins (Heidegger)? What this walking exile produces is precisely the body of legends that is currently lacking in one's own vicinity; it is a fiction, which moreover has the double characteristic like dreams or pedestrian rhetoric, or being the effect of displacements and condensations. As a corollary, one can measure the importance of these signifying practices (to tell oneself legends) as practices that invent spaces. — Michel De Certeau

The eve of a long trip is filled with both exaltation and anxiety, but the day itself is a pure euphoria of action, and anxiety returns in the middle of the trip, at an empty moment, when the exoticism of the setting out has not yet given way to that of going home. — Edouard Leve

I picked up one and then a second and then a third of these stones, finding them at about the rate of one stone to the acre. And here is where my adventure became magical, for in a striking foreshortening of time that embraced thousands of years, I had become the witness of this miserly rain from the stars. the marvel of marvels was that there on the rounded back of the planet, between this magnetic sheet and those stars, a human consciousness was present in which as in a mirror that rain could be reflected. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I watch sitcoms like Seinfeld, and here's a newsflash, but what a great show. — Scott Wolf

Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don't refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it's so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren't especially interested in viewing them as people - just as objects representing their culture. — N.K. Jemisin

You never realised you appreciate a person until the day they're were gone, permanently — Diyar Harraz

The point is that it doesn't matter if you look like a beast before or after the hit, as long as you look like a beauty at the moment of impact. — Seve Ballesteros

I have problems with a lot of photography, particularly street photography and photojournalism - objectifying the other, finding the contempt and exoticism that you might feel within yourself or toward yourself and projecting it out to others. There can be an abusive power to photography, too. — Barbara Kruger

Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in their evocation of dreams, mysterious places and states of mind, in their excess of words, not events. The surface of the texts, the sound of the words, point to themselves as manufactured, as illusion. The decadents attempted to create texts that announced themselves as artifice. — Asti Hustvedt

The exotic and the erotic ideals go hand in hand, and this fact also contributes another proof of a more or less obvious truth - that is, that a love of the exotic is usually an imaginative projection of a sexual desire. — Mario Praz