Filler Quotes & Sayings

Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings. — Martin Filler

It's supposed to be raining Thank Yous on Thursday, after an ingratitude draught. Also, you'd better enjoy my love while it's fresh, before it goes rotten and I have to sell it to McDonald's as chicken filler. — Jarod Kintz

When Oscar Niemeyer died on December 5, 2012, ten days before his 105th birthday, he was universally regarded as the very last of the twentieth century's major architectural masters, an astonishing survivor whose most famous accomplishment, Brasilia, was the climactic episode of utopian High Modern urbanism. — Martin Filler

You need to take out the stuff that's just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler! — Stephen King

I had no album title, and the album is like a journey in that it's a complete body of work. It's not just a couple of catchy songs and filler, so I felt that I needed to capture the essence of the album. — Vanessa Carlton

Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler. — Douglas Coupland

Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder's widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the Kimbell with suitable reverence, but given the buildings they later commissioned, many post-Bilbao museum patrons obviously wanted something quite different. The disparity between Kahn's museums and recent examples of that genre parallels the discrepancy he saw between postwar Modernism and ancient Classicism: "Our stuff looks tinny compared to it." At a time when commercial values are systematically corrupting the museum - one of civilized society's most elevating experiences - the example of Kahn, among the most courageous and successful architectural reformers of all time, seems more relevant and cautionary than ever. — Martin Filler

Because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty. — Jodi Picoult

Death is real. Death changes things. Everything else is filler, merely a message from our sponsor. — Michael Marshall Smith

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums. — Martin Filler

Considering my specialization in architecture, I'm not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor's 'Batman: Death by Design.' — Martin Filler

Art has simple founding principles: Less is more, more or less; fill in the blanks with no filler. — Kevin Focke

Some museum boards think that choosing an architect can be reduced to a science, but it comes down to a matter of taste, pure and simple. A shortlist of prospective designers speaks volumes about the likely outcome. If the candidates' styles are too divergent, the search committee doesn't know what it wants. — Martin Filler

Before World War II, Modernist architects sometimes had to resort to custom fabrication or outright fakery to achieve the machine imagery advocated by the Bauhaus after its initial, Expressionist, phase. Stucco masqueraded as reinforced concrete; rivets were used for decoration. — Martin Filler

The danger for any artist whose work is both recognizable and critically acclaimed is complacent repetition - the temptation to churn out easily identifiable, eagerly welcomed, and readily salable designs. — Martin Filler

The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience. — Martin Filler

To the Indian, politics are what the weather is to an Englishman. Politics are an introduction to a stranger on a train, they are the standard filler for embarrassing silences in conversation, they are the inevitable small talk at any social gathering. — Santha Rama Rau

Cost overruns are not uncommon in architecture, particularly for designs that depart from structural or technological norms, or demand a finer quality of execution than commercial schemes - conditions typical of buildings for cultural institutions. Budgets are exceeded for many reasons, not all of them within an architect's control. — Martin Filler

The truth be told, the World Trade Center was neither a very good work of architecture nor a very successful piece of urbanism. Its shortcomings were somewhat mitigated by the westward and southward expansion of the World Financial Center and Battery Park City during the 1980s. — Martin Filler

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity," he wrote in one of his essays. "The next is to strive and deserve to conquer; but he whose life has passed without contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence. — Anonymous

Readers often tell me after they've read the books, they find it difficult to sum up the plot in a simple way. My response is, "It's a story about the love a father shares for his daughter. All the rest is just filler."
- MJ Mancini, on his best-selling trilogy, "Revelation". — M.J. Mancini

He's a filler. You know - stuff something into your heart quickly to stop it from cracking open. — Tarryn Fisher

I worked my way through art school as an auto mechanic, doing various stuff including sanding bodywork and using Bondo filler. — Fred Tomaselli

Despite the persistent image of the architect as a heroic loner erecting monumental edifices through sheer force of will, the building art has always been a highly cooperative enterprise. — Martin Filler

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler. — Mark Strand

Make sure your children live longer than you do. Do that and you've really done something, okay? The rest is filler — Thomas Christopher Greene

I now realize that education is a last wild effort on the part of the authorities to prevent an overdose of leisure from driving the world mad. Learning is no longer an improver; it is merely the most expensive time-filler the world has ever known. — Quentin Crisp

You are the chief bucket filler, and the best way to fill buckets is with excellent communication. — David Cottrell

The first half of the 1960s was the apogee of what might be termed the Age of Cool - as defined by that quality of being simultaneously with-it and disengaged, in control but nonchalant, knowing but ironically self-aware, and above all inscrutably undemonstrative. — Martin Filler

The more natural the charcoal, the better your food will taste. Rather than briquettes, use lump charcoal, which is is all-natural. Lump charcoal will cause your grill to get much hotter than briquettes. Also, briquettes have chemical filler which holds saw dust together and can change the taste of the food. — Johnny Trigg

But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself in an empty room and thinks "I'm amazing." It's impossible to imagine how that would work. But being "amazing" is supposed to be what life is about. As a result, the windows of time people spend by themselves become these meaningless experiences that don't really count. It's filler. They're deleted scenes. pg 156 — Chuck Klosterman

The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzle makers. — Keith Preston

During the nineteenth century, the rapid emergence and proliferation of new manufacturing methods and building technologies led to the establishment of polytechnic schools that concentrated on the practicalities of engineering and construction rather than the niceties of stylistic correctness or adherence to established precedent. — Martin Filler

After Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the belief in decent housing as a political right or social obligation was supplanted in the U.S. by the notion that suitable shelter should be an act of charity. — Martin Filler

The skyscraper style first advocated by Louis Sullivan - a tower of strongly vertical character with clear definitions among base, shaft, and crown - has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of this building type. — Martin Filler

The original and very basic 'Law & Order' series has always seemed to me to be 100-percent exposition, with no filler, no pesky nuances and almost no background about the series' continuing characters - just the hard nuts and bolts of pure storytelling. — Tom Shales

But that isn't why. The why is that none of it matters. Not school, not cheerleading, not boyfriends or friends or parties or creative writing programs or ... " She waves her arms at the world. "It's all just time filler until we die. — Jennifer Niven

Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience. — Vernor Vinge

History is a yarn. And can I deny that what I wanted all along was not some golden nugget that history would at last yield up, but History itself: the Grand Narrative, the filler of vacuums, the dispeller of fears of the dark? — Graham Swift

Experimental architecture by its very nature is more prone to the depredations of time and natural elements than buildings made from conventional materials through traditional methods. Avant-garde architects often simply do not know how the products of their imagination will perform when implemented, especially if untested components are involved. — Martin Filler

Picasso's superhuman gift for draftsmanship might have made him lazy about pursuing the full potential of color. It was not unusual for him to build a composition by first outlining figures and objects in black and then filling the interstices in a perfunctory manner that can put one in mind of a museum-shop coloring book. — Martin Filler

The financial benefits of prefabrication have never been as large as its advocates predicted, for although some labor costs can be reduced by machine manufacturing, on-site assembly of any building still depends to some extent on the handwork of skilled craftsmen. — Martin Filler

There is no sadder tale in the annals of architecture than the virtual disappearance of the defining architectural form of the Modern Movement - publicly sponsored housing. — Martin Filler

I love words. They're fun. I don't think any word can just be filler. There's no room for it. It's like a puzzle. Every song can be written a million times. How can you say it differently? — Kacey Musgraves

What was that you gave me to eat?" Winter panicked.
A Filler Crisp," Clover said, his eyes seventy percent concerned and thirty percent mischievous. — Obert Skye

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed. — Martin Filler

I don't do filler songs. I don't get them. They don't make any sense to me. Why would I literally waste my time on a song that doesn't hold up to the same standards as the other songs on the album? I won't play it live. — Betty Who

The tall building, concentrating man in one place more densely than ever before, similarly concentrates the dilemma of our public architecture at the end of the twentieth century: whether the new forms made possible by technology are doomed by the low calculations of modern patrons and their architects. — Martin Filler

Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it. — Martin Filler

I'm a lazy guy. I can't focus for too long. I'd rather hear a record that has no filler. — Thomas Mars

One of the stated goals of the postmodern movement in architecture was a greater sensitivity to the people who live in or use newly designed buildings. — Martin Filler

Snohetta promotes a more democratic workplace atmosphere than most other architectural offices. This may merely reflect prevalent employment practices in Scandinavia, but Snohetta places a stronger emphasis on group participation in the design process than typical high-style firms. — Martin Filler

From the outset, MoMA followed the Bauhaus's strict prohibition against design that even hinted at the decorative, a prejudice that skewed the pioneering museum's view of Modernism for decades. — Martin Filler

The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations. — Martin Filler

Maybe. Maybe not. Whether it's filler or not, I'm pretty glad to be here." If there's anything I've learned, it's that you need to make the most of it. "It mattered enough for you not to jump. — Jennifer Niven

We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals of interest in even the most obscure ones tend to reveal more about those who make revisionist assessments than about those who are being reassessed. — Martin Filler

I hate the word fine. It is descriptive of nothing. Socially acceptable filler with no true meaning. It's what you say when you are checking your feelings, unwilling or unable to let yourself be too happy or too sad. Fine. It's an emotional bookmark. A pause until you can continue the story. — Emme Burton

Bucket filling is in the eye of the bucket holder, not the bucket filler. Fill their buckets with things that are important to them ... not you. — David Cottrell

The magnificent lobby of the Chrysler Building - faced with rare marbles, aglitter with decorative metalwork, and surmounted by a ceiling painted with a totemic image of the tower itself - leads to elevator cabs inlaid with exotic woods in fanciful patterns. The entire route from street to office is invested with ceremony, dignity, and delight. — Martin Filler

What a museum chooses to exhibit is sometimes less important than how such decisions are made and what values inform them. To have the crucial role of museum professionals usurped by self-serving tycoons in the name of economic imperative threatens not only the integrity of individual institutions but the very principle of art held in public trust. — Martin Filler

Architecture was the last of the major professions to devise a formal 'cursus honorum' before its practice could be undertaken. — Martin Filler

A turning point in the public's perception of the building art came with the publication of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'An Autobiography' of 1932, a picaresque narrative that captivated many who hadn't the slightest inkling of what architects actually did. — Martin Filler

Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government? — Voltaire

I didn't really feel that there were any filler tracks on 'The Red Shoes,' but if I were to do that album now, I wouldn't make it so long. — Kate Bush

Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived. — Martin Filler

We don't really have a movie industry; we have a trailer industry. The movie guys make five minutes worth of stuff to get people in the theatre, and eighty-five minutes of filler. — Jessica Zafra

Oh, My God..." Even as he saw the face and heard that voice say "Crow..." he was throwing himself backward out of the shaft. Then the top of the elevator car blew out and the air was filler with shrapnel, everybody hit the deck, and crow grabbed his crossbow, yelling, "Get back! It's him, the vampire!" But it was too late. The vampire rose with the grip of a single beautiful hand, almost levitating toward them, his power and eyes and smile and terrible beauty so alien but so familiar, so pale but so solid, so horrible but so magnetic. And he came closer and closer. "Get back," ordered crow, and the Team started to obey. "Too late," the vampire said, halting them with the voice. "You've let me get too close." Crow raised his crossbow all the way then saied: "Hold it there." The thing laughed and said, "Are you joking?" "Stop!" said Crow. And the vampire smiled and showed his big teeth and said: "Stop me... — John Steakley

One of the most persistent yet elusive dreams of the Modern Movement in architecture has been prefabrication: industrially made structures that can be assembled at a building site. — Martin Filler

...the locale did not make him think of her, nor did most things. He felt no negativity about the time they had spent together, but simply did not dwell on it much. She had been a seat filler, memorable as the smiling face of a beautiful girl in the window of a passing train, inspiring a fleeting moment of joy and promise, immediately forgotten with the opening of that day's newspaper. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

He's a filler," Cammie says with more conviction than a suicide bomber.
"What does that mean?" I am studying the menu, contemplating an almond croissant.
"You know - stuff something into your heart quickly to stop it from cracking open ... from
bleeding out ... — Tarryn Fisher

Winning the Pritzker assures a flood of work in one's seventies and eighties, jobs necessarily carried out by assistants as the demands of modern-day cultural stardom and the inevitable waning of physical capacities prevent many architects from attaining the transcendent final phase more easily achieved by artists in other mediums. — Martin Filler

One reason I've never been a fan of graphic novels is because a central aspect of literature for me has always been imagining what the things I'm reading about look like. — Martin Filler

For years I walked around with the phrase "Green River" because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was "Lodi", which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was "Proud Mary". I had no idea what that title meant. — John Fogerty

It's strange how extras have become such a big part of the business. I don't know what I think of it. I mean, some of them are great, most of them are filler. — John Landis

There can be little question that the tall building presents one of the most difficult challenges to the architect. — Martin Filler

Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment. — Martin Filler

Never be someone's filler chapter. — Jaycee Ford

Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways. — Martin Filler

The Frankfurt Museum of Decorative Arts is a handsome building, which takes its cues from the riverside Biedermeier villa next to it, and it is well-integrated into an overall scheme for a group of small museums. — Martin Filler

It's hard to find words to explain why you love someone, they don't make words with that much passion. And even if they did, there isn't a perfect combination of syllables and sounds to create a word strong enough to explain love. Love is just a filler word, a useless word that tries to do a job that no word can. — Kandi Steiner

You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide ... And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers. — Nick Harkaway

Sort of' is such a harmless thing to say ... sort of. It's just a filler. Sort of ... it doesn't really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like ... after "I love you" ... or "You're going to live" ... or "It's a boy! — Demetri Martin

Few developments central to the history of art have been so misrepresented or misunderstood as the brief, brave, glorious, doomed life of the Bauhaus - the epochally influential German art, architecture, crafts, and design school that was founded in Goethe's sleepy hometown of Weimar in 1919. — Martin Filler

The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography. — Martin Filler

High among the unpredictable variables that endanger the survival of worthy buildings are the vagaries of taste. — Martin Filler

Although there are countless tangents that a career in the building arts can take, it is nonetheless most unusual for a major architectural practice to emerge once a firm's principals are well into what is loosely called middle age. — Martin Filler

By 1970, the first stirrings of the revolt against Modernist orthodoxy in architecture had been felt, although it would be several years more until Postmodernism was widely accepted and made classical motifs permissible in high-style building design for the first time in decades. — Martin Filler

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century exponents of prefabrication were certain it would supplant age-old traditions of individualized design and handcrafted construction. The building art would be revolutionized by freeing designers and construction workers from repetitive tasks, and democratized by making high-style architecture more affordable. — Martin Filler

Postmodernism came nowhere close in quality to Modernism at its apogee, not least because that later style wholly lacked the social impetus that animated the designs most emblematic of the Modern Movement. — Martin Filler

During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as 'sketches' for ideas that are often later translated to the larger scale of public commissions. — Martin Filler

Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last. — Dick Dale

As with many other folk beliefs, 'feng-shui' undoubtedly incorporates some scientifically correct observation or received wisdom based on direct experience of natural phenomena; but it needs to be dealt with skeptically as a credible system of thought. Some feng-shui prescriptions can certainly lead to desirable results. — Martin Filler

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial. — Martin Filler

As Christians, we're supposed to be the salt of the earth, not the filler. — Brian Reynolds

One of the most persistent images in American urbanism is that of the proverbial city on a hill, as first envisioned on these shores by the Puritan John Winthrop, via the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. — Martin Filler

Elevated locations imply elevated purposes, even in American cities departing as radically as Los Angeles does from the traditional planning patterns of the Eastern Seaboard. — Martin Filler

Although prefabrication has a long history - the ancient Romans shipped pre-cut stone columns, pediments, and other architectural elements to their colonies in North Africa, where the numbered parts were reassembled into temples - the idea took on a new impetus with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. — Martin Filler

Before the professionalization of architecture in the nineteenth century, it was standard for an aspiring mason or carpenter to begin his apprenticeship at fourteen and to become a master builder by his early twenties. — Martin Filler

I'm eighty-two, can you believe it?" She's actually ageless, given that her purple face is stretched tighter than an eggplant. "So what did you have done?" I ask, unable to help myself. "The whole package," she says. "Got my eyelids done, some Botox, a little filler, chin implant, cheekbones, got my lips done, neck lift, breast implants, tummy tuck, ass lift. — Kristan Higgins

I keep on 5 to 10 pounds above my jeans weight, as the ultimate no-filler-needed refresher, and buy a size up on jeans. — Iman