Thematic Quotes & Sayings

Rather, it provided a literary framework within which the author could effectively express the Hebraic conviction that one God created the world by bringing order out of chaos. He was interested in thematic rather than chronological organization. The — Gregory A. Boyd

It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism. — Vera Farmiga

The average action game doesn't much traffic in thematic grandiosity, but the BioShock games are different. — Tom Bissell

To me, feminism in literature deals with the female characters being in some way central to the thematic concerns of the book, or that they are agents of change to some degree. In other words, the lens is focused deeply and intensely on the female characters and doesn't waver, which allows for a glimpse into the rich inner lives of the characters. — Laurie Foos

Order is important. In language classes, you'll typically learn words in thematic order because it's a comfortable way to organize classes ("Today, we're going to learn about animals!") and it's a comfortable way to learn ("Today, I learned about animals!"). But there's an unintended consequence of doing this: you get your words mixed up. I learned all of my French numbers and colors at the same time, and I still have problems remembering whether sept is six or seven, or whether jaune is yellow or green. This is borne out by the research: when you learn a bunch of similar words at once, you'll have a harder time remembering which one is which. — Gabriel Wyner

A lot of modern film scoring is about a lack of themes, so I try to find ways of using music that doesn't necessarily have thematic material in it to make the points when there is thematic material even stronger. It's cool to be able to combine old and new. — Joseph Trapanese

One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature. — Greg Graffin

I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it. — Martin Scorsese

Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway- its true religion? Wasn't the theatre our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons- but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it. That summer, the one you'll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images ... flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that become our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? — Jess Walter

I really like the interplay between thinking of text as ephemeral and thinking of it as a concrete, physical thing. With almost anything that I write, I'll stay completely immersed in the electronic text of it for a period of time and in another period, I'll stay immersed in it as a physical thing that can cut your skin. So with the apocalypses, I had them taped all over the wall and they had codes on them. Sometimes I would color code them in terms of thematic elements, sometimes in terms of voice, sometimes visual forms or images. — Lucy Corin

It might be thematic work. It might be theatrical. I enjoy that kind of work. — John Sebastian

That summer, the one you'll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images - the same Avatar, same Harry Potter, same Fast and the Furious, flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? Also, — Jess Walter

For decades I've had an intense interest in the history and mythology of the Silk Road, I think in part because an aspect of me loves the resonance of long distance travel as a theme or anchor, if you will, for narrative. The ways that cultures rise and fade across centuries, the ways cultures connect and conflict, absorb and reject, transform or remain static: As a writer this is thematic content that never gets old for me. A million million stories rise out of the endless back and forth of cultural contact in all its best and worst aspects, and everything in between. Weave that within a story of adventure or empire or a journey into unknown spaces and I'm in writer and reader hog heaven. — Kate Elliott

A person experiences time by traveling through the environment consisting of time and space, and encounters a variety of sense impressions. Time is the combined experience and cataloguing what is taking place now, a recollecting what took place before now, and the anticipation or expectation of a person registering future physical and mental sensations. Time is a happening that will arrive from the future and it will last for about as long as it takes to a person to inhale and exhale one deep bodily breath. In each recognizable segment of time, a person experiences in a thematic breathing cycle a tangible sense perception of either seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or some combination thereof. Then that distinct morsel of life detected by the physical senses passes from the slipstream of now and lodges into the silted fold of bygone memories. — Kilroy J. Oldster

'Interstellar' is a thematic sequel to Christopher Nolan's last original film, 'Inception'. It drops us into a dark future full of otherworldly landscapes and time distortions. — Annalee Newitz

Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I'm of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work. — Sara Zarr

I usually start from the most general to the more specific. I'll get an emotional overview for the film as a whole, trying to pinpoint what the musical identity is and come up with thematic ideas - any ideas that identify as succinctly as possible what the film is. — Marco Beltrami

Star Wars was great at the beginning and crap at the end while Star Trek has always been interesting, and the difference is in the writing, and the thematic intentions. — William Monahan

ECCLESIASTES - NOTE ON 1:2 vanity of vanities! All is vanity. This extremely important thematic word (Hb. hebel, lit., "vapor," taken figuratively as "vanity"; see esv footnote) occurs frequently throughout the book; at this early point, however, the Preacher leaves it unexplained. It is only as the book progresses that its meaning becomes clear (for further discussion of its meaning, see Introduction: Key Themes — Anonymous

I was vested emotionally in 'Battlestar.' I really loved the thematic things. I don't feel it really got its shot, and I can't blame anyone else; I was at the center of that. — Glen A. Larson

'London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself. — Peter Ackroyd

Considering what a prolific writer Dickens was, the word 'Dickensian' could legitimately cover a vast thematic territory, explaining at least some of the variety of its applications. — Matthew Pearl

The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows. — Stanley Fish

The most important thematics in humanity I think that are completely universal and completely relatable from one person to the other. As long as, one more time going to back to the thematic, as long as you're truthful to that thematic, you can trust that that is going to transcend. — Alfonso Cuaron

I come from a musical family. Mom was a piano teacher for a large portion of her life, and Dad is a saxophone hobbyist who grew up in England during the heyday of Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. I started taking piano lessons from my Mom, but it's too easy to slack off with your parent, so she passed me on to a friend of hers, where I got more motivated to play music by playing pop hits and TV themes. I did some classical training, but I was always more into the really thematic stuff. — Gerard Cox

Many shooters ask the gamer to use violence against pure, unambiguous evil: monsters, Nazis, corporate goons, aliens of Ottoman territorial ambition. Yet these shooters typically have nothing to say about evil and violence, other than that evil is evil and violence is violent. This was never the most promising thematic carbon to trace, and yet shooters keep doing so with as little self-questioning as a medieval monk copying out scripture. — Tom Bissell

My feeling has always been if you entertain people, they give you permission to do more on a thematic or character level. — Noah Hawley

It is important to understand what are you trying to capture with a camera. What you want to use this tool for. It helps to begin to search for and concentrate on thematic photography. — Leonard Nimoy

The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures. — Michael Crichton

California seemed to me to be all about secrets and the need for safety. And this leads to this thematic messiness I'm still trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, when it comes to the themes, this is nothing like an Atwood novel. — Edan Lepucki

In writing, I want to be remembered for telling good stories in beautiful and powerful language, using the poetry of words to reflect the thematic concerns of compelling stories. — Kim Edwards

Songs need to have a secret, cryptic, thematic thing about them, otherwise they are just messy and all over the place. — Courtney Love

Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances. — David Shields

'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience. — Simon McBurney

I mean, what's thematic? How to put it? Going back to, like, 1980, when I started writing poetry. Language itself became an issue. I'd even think about font as an aspect of text, you know, how something looks on a page. A lot of this is the product of a very solitary existence, it's like, language, I mean, you know. A lot of time spent alone in the creation of all of this stuff. — Richard Meltzer

I really respect people who, while they only do films, they have a wide repertoire and a wide thematic array of films they do. — Graham Phillips

Nature is increasingly the thematic focus of industrial heritage. — Carolyn Kitch

The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing, and put it into a story. — Scott Rudin

Our intention and aspiration is to continue building out thematic information about every subject - basemaps, imagery, demographics, landscape data, etc. - so anyone can use it to access thousands of authoritative maps. — Jack Dangermond

I've been doing photography in one form or another for, oh golly, over seventy years. I don't carry cameras. I used to. For many years I carried cameras wherever I went. Photograph whatever I saw that was of interest. In the last years, I've only used cameras to explore thematic ideas which presented themselves first. And then bring out the cameras to try to explore that idea. — Leonard Nimoy

Making photos is helpful of course to master the craft. To get comfortable with the camera. Learn what a camera can do and how to use the camera successfully. Doing exercises for example if you try to find out things that the camera can do that the eye cannot do. So that you have a tool that will do what you need to be done. But then once you have mastered the craft the most important thing is to determine why you want to shoot pictures and what you want to shoot pictures of. That's where the thematic issue comes to life. — Leonard Nimoy

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty. — Ralph Ellison

I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens, this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives. — Stephen King

Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting. — George Saunders

Fiction is most effective when its themes are unspoken. An ideal fiction has a kind of thematic ghostliness, whereby the novel marks its meanings most strongly as it passes, as it disappears, rather as on a street snow gets dirtier, more marked, as it disappears. — James Wood

On a cohesive team, leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization. That means they'll readily offer up their departments' resources when it serves the greater good of the team, and they'll take an active interest in the thematic goal regardless of how closely related it is to their functional area. — Patrick Lencioni

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it. — Twyla Tharp

From [Nikolai] Medtner himself, who I do not think was the best possible advocate of his own works. But that's my opinion: I find him a little uninteresting and cold, sometimes. Also, at first, the thematic material is not of a kind that makes the greatest appeal, but if you keep with Medtner, I think he will take hold of you, and you're very likely to become a fan. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

I tend not to dwell on the parallels between chess and business, chess and the martial arts, or any two things for that matter, because the truth is that all pursuits are connected if we gain an eye for the thematic links. — Joshua Waitzkin

Having a very serious thematic element in the lyrics and then juxtaposing with something really triumphant and just a big beat to dance to is a nice contrast to having a dark message. — Brendon Urie

The thematic links came a little later, after I noticed I was gravitating towards certain elements - war, city, weather. So it wasn't all planned out from the start, it came out of the process. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

I think that the thematic, formal history of the literary form ultimately harkens back to a different political system. That is to say, a feudal order: the aristocratic dispensation of leisure time, the refinements of the self. With the shift from feudal aristocracy to democracy there has been a long process of evolution. I think we're in the throes of a kind of steep, logarithmic shift, and I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them. — Ayad Akhtar

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums. — David Bowie

These bridges support revelations in opposition to repudiations and personal testimonies challenging thematic stereotypes. Although — MariJo Moore

I have traveled down this path before - 'List of Seven' and 'Twin Peaks' both have thematic similarities - but 'Paladin' took me much deeper into the intuitive underground. Always bearing in mind Joseph Campbell's Rule No. 1: When entering a labyrinth, don't forget your ball of twine. — Mark Frost

On the board, Mr. Beery had written "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it." I wasn't sure if this was meant to be inspirational, thematic, or a joke about making sure to study. — Gabrielle Zevin

I think the idea that television has evolved to this place of real thematic richness and the fact that you no longer have to get 10 million people to watch your show in order to propagate its survival are the best things that have ever happened to storytelling in this medium. — Damon Lindelof

expresses how the Creator solves the problems he needs to solve in order to bring creation out of chaos. Therefore, we have every reason to suppose that the succession of days was not meant to refer to a chronological succession but to a logical, thematic, and literary succession. In — Gregory A. Boyd

Mahler was a poor yea-sayer. His voice cracks, like Nietzsche's, when he proclaims values, speaks from mere conviction, when he himself puts into practice the abhorrent notion of overcoming on which the thematic analyses capitalise, and makes music as if joy were already in the world. His vainly jubilant movements unmask jubilation; his subjective incapacity for the happy end denounces itself. — Theodor W. Adorno

Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable. — Gene Wolfe

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel. — Norman Spinrad

The way you challenge Superman is by having things happen very, very quickly in different places and then asking, 'Who does he save first? What powers must he use to save each person or stop each disaster?' That's one of the ways you make him interesting beyond the thematic and moral issues that make Superman. — Jim Lee

There is definitely a thematic lineage between 'Descender' and my previous work, like 'Sweet Tooth' and 'Trillium.' — Jeff Lemire

The thematic bucket of vomit that I've been chained to since I was about 9 is the moral complexity of anti-heroism. I have always been interested in good people who do bad things for understandable reasons. — Neil Cross

She did not believe Fate as painstaking as her husband; she was more inclined to take matters into her own hands. She had ample reason for doing so. For a Jew in Russia to be a fatalist was tantamount to inviting disaster. Nabokov trusted in a thematic design which could not have looked quite so dazzling, so sure-handed, to someone who was in the habit of gingerly tiptoeing one step ahead of destiny. — Stacy Schiff

I do look at that thematic of healing of humanity. — Forest Whitaker

You're able to do things in novels: introduce subplots, other characters, thematic layers and so on, in a way that you simply can't in a movie. A movie really has to choose its battles. — Walter Kirn

My memory of those places is better than my pictures. That's why I get much more satisfaction out of shooting thematic work that has to do with an idea that I'm searching for, or searching to express. — Leonard Nimoy