Masterwork Quotes & Sayings

Air power is the most difficult of military force to measure or even express in precise terms. — Winston Churchill

I don't think I've ever read an old book through from start to finish. Not after more than six months after writing it, that is. — Nicholas Mosley

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem. — Victor LaValle

Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 masterwork Leviathan. I strongly recommend that you read part III, chapter 38, and part IV, chapter 44, — Anonymous

Argo might well be studied as a bait-and-switch masterwork: In showing the capture of the American Embassy in Tehran, Ben Affleck first made a fetish of authenticity, then served up a shamelessly Hollywood (and wholly fictional) climax, then capped the whole thing off with a coda that was essentially a tribute to his movie's authenticity, complete with side-by-side photos of the actors and their near-identical real-life counterparts. Well done, sir! — David Edelstein

Moby-Dick is a long, grueling, convoluted graft. And yet, as soon as I completed it, once I could hold it at arm's length and admire its intricacy and design, I knew Moby-Dick was obviously, uncannily, a masterwork. It wormed into my subconsious; I dreamed about it for nights afterwards. Whereas when I finished The Da Vinci Code, which had taken little less than twelve hours from cover to cover, I chicked it aside and thought: wow - I really ought to read something good. — Andy Miller

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. — Matt Taibbi

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment. — Matthew Arnold

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country's writers. — Jonathan Yardley

Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. — Shakti Gawain

Remember the importance of phrases ... a piece of something, an entry, a moment, a mark. This adjusts the pressure of the giant task of creating the perfect masterwork. — Sara Genn

I find I've always been judgmental about comedy (laughs) and it's hard to turn that off, really. But what constant exposure to live comedy does is it makes you give people a second chance. — Scott Aukerman

Mike Compton knows more about Bill Monroe style mandolin than the Father of Bluegrass himself. — John Hartford

True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself
one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

'Notorious' is a masterwork. I can watch it every day. — Bellamy Young

Sometimes I go to God and say, God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God's already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn't pay Him for what He's done for me. — A.W. Tozer

Faith is a gift from God and he gives it to whomever he chooses — Mother Teresa

Trollops are capital things in port, but will not do at sea. — Patrick O'Brian

A dancer on break approached him. She smiled. Each tooth was angled in a different direction, as if her mouth were the masterwork of a mad orthodontist.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"You're really cute."
"I don't have any money."
She spun and walked away. Ah, romance. — Harlan Coben

The term "godawful" should be used sparingly in connection with motion pictures. With Angels & Demons , however, it seems oddly appropriate. Not only does this prequel-turned-sequel to The Da Vinci Code make its predecessor seem like a masterwork of pacing and plotting, but it may represent a nadir for director Ron Howard and is probably the worst instance of acting from star Tom Hanks since back in the days when he was struggling out from under the shadow of Bosom Buddies . — James Berardinelli

Ah, the deliciousness of discovering a masterwork. My heart begins to lift. I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy. — Rabih Alameddine

A masterwork. A particularly American magic realism that touches the heart of race and childhood in our country; it's 100 Years of Solitude for an entire generation of American Baby Boomers, and deserves the widest possible audience. — Ellen Kushner

The Apotheosis of Washington - a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda - was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as "The Michelangelo of the Capitol," Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room's most lofty canvas - the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God's largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery - from the trompe l'oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President's Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi's masterwork. Robert — Dan Brown

Rick Bass is one of a dwindling handful of American fiction writers still celebrating the importance of place, the natural world, and the struggle of a few brave souls to live and work respectfully in what's left of our western wilderness ... The Lives of Rocks is his most lyrical and powerful book to date ... a masterwork. — Howard Frank Mosher

Wisdom is the right application of knowledge; and true education ... is the application of knowledge to the development of a noble and Godlike character. — David O. McKay

The excellence of this important contribution to genre literature CANNOT be overstated A masterwork. — William F. Nolan

If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable? ... We are born that way. We don't choose it. So shouldn't it be acceptable, excuse - this is according to the way the left thinks about things. — Rush Limbaugh

I can get pissed off very easily. — Richard Matheson

It is not possible to be truly balanced in one's views of an abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and Recovery, "neutrality" actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means you see the couple's problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn't abuse. — Lundy Bancroft

The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity. — Ezra Pound

Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks and myths. One of the nation's most brilliant writers emerges as all the more fascinating precisely because he was so very human. Painstakingly researched and compellingly written, Ralph Ellison is a masterwork of the genre of literary biography. — Henry Louis Gates

The face you have at age 25 is the face God gave you, but the face you have after 50 is the face you earned. — Cindy Crawford

Now I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, 'Painting is a blind man's profession' and 'To draw you must close your eyes and sing'. And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains, not his eyes. Yes. Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction, we take in every lesson we find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw. — Jandy Nelson

Cast PURPOSE as the lead in your movie and you will help God, your Director, produce a masterwork. — DeVon Franklin

I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Then solar systems, galaxies, supernovas, infinite space itself will become elements of a final masterwork
a never-ending festival, a celestial amusement park in which every exploding star and spinning electron is part of the empyreal choreography. — Steven Millhauser

A person is formed by experiences. The past is a blind sculptor. To deny that artist his masterwork is to mock your own experience. — Jim Starlin

Everything you've ever read of mine is first-draft. This is one of the peculiarities of the comics field. By the time you're working on chapter three of your masterwork, chapter one is already in print. You can't go back and suddenly decide to make this character a woman, or have this one fall out of a window. — Alan Moore

Why isn't the manuscript ready? Because every book is more work than anyone intended. If authors and editors knew, or acknowledged, how much work was ahead, fewer contracts would be signed. Each book, before the contract, is beautiful to contemplate. By the middle of the writing, the book has become, for the author, a hate object. For the editor, in the middle of editing, it has become a two-ton concrete necklace. However, both author and editor will recover the gleam in their eyes when the work is completed, and see the book as the masterwork it really is. — Samuel S. Vaughan