M.h. Abrams Quotes

#1. I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.

J.J. Abrams

#2. Life without literature is a life reduced to penury.

M.H. Abrams

#3. Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

M.H. Abrams

#4. I fell in love with 'Star Trek' after J. J. Abrams's movie. I'm so into that.

Tatiana Maslany

#5. I'm an impatient guy and tend not to like to stay with one thing for a long time. I'll never be able to write as many scripts as I did for "Felicity" or "Alias" ever again. I'm just too impatient these days. I want to get on to the next project.

J.J. Abrams

#6. I hope America sees I am a goofy guy andI'm kind a crazy, I hope they see that I am a musician aswell, that I have music all around my body - I'm just exfoliating music, and I just hope America sees that.

Casey Abrams

#7. We believed that to understand literature, you had to understand its place in history and culture.

M.H. Abrams

#8. But I'm grateful for everyone who would want to read a spoiler because it means that they care and want to see the movie ... I know what it feels like, as an enormous Star Wars fan myself.

J.J. Abrams

#9. Some people think I'm a total moron and I would hope most people think I'm very good at what I do.

Dan Abrams

#10. I'm not going to let people get away with either a dishonest or inaccurate premise to what we're talking about because I think that does the viewer a disturbance.

Dan Abrams

#11. The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

M.H. Abrams

#12. I am lucky, I'm the first to admit that.

J.J. Abrams

#13. When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

M.H. Abrams

#14. It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

M.H. Abrams

#15. I was never a monist - always a diversitarian.

M.H. Abrams

#16. I'm literally open to any medium that will have me.

J.J. Abrams

#17. What can we expect from this latest crop of indie directors who have been sucked into the franchise factory? I'm especially curious about 'Star Wars,' which will feature an all-indie crew after J. J. Abrams finishes with 'Episode VII.'

Annalee Newitz

#18. We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background.

M.H. Abrams

#19. If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

M.H. Abrams

#20. I'm obsessed with things that are distinctly analogue.

J.J. Abrams

#21. After my episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' ran, Larry David and JJ Abrams were like, 'I discovered her,' but I was like 'Hold up. Please. I'm from 'Next Friday.' Everybody knows me!'

Kym Whitley

#22. just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost... out there 'do'in it

Gerard Abrams

#23. We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing - by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.

M.H. Abrams

#24. John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

M.H. Abrams

#25. The first test any poem must pass is no longer, 'Is it true to nature?' but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, 'Is it sincere? Is it genuine?'

M.H. Abrams

#26. Jews had an outsider's eye on a lot of Western tradition.

M.H. Abrams

#27. I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations.

J.J. Abrams

#28. If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

M.H. Abrams

#29. I'm a car singer, in fact sometimes I pretend to take my dog out for a walk, and I'll just drive him around and start singin'.

Casey Abrams

#30. The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.

M.H. Abrams

#31. I read our emails every day and I know there are people out there who think I'm awful.

Dan Abrams

#32. Whenever I'm feeling kind of down or something like that, or even good, the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen is a go-to song of mine. It's like watching a movie, but with your ears.

Casey Abrams

#33. It's not often that I read about actors that I'm going to be meeting. I get to read articles about actors who were going to come in, so I get to see someone and say, "Oh, I read that I was going to see you. It's very nice to see you."

J.J. Abrams

#34. Please remember that you can talk to me about anything. I know it's hard to talk to your old mom about things, but I'll always help you in whatever way I can. I'm serious. You have to remember that I used to hold you right here in my arms.

Matt Abrams

#35. I think it's possible - perhaps even necessary - to find comedy in any war. I mean, look at the brilliant work which was done by Joseph Heller and Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H) and Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk - which I haven't read, but have heard was funny).

Dave Abrams

#36. I think by laying it out for the viewer I'm avoiding the issue of bias.

Dan Abrams

#37. Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and 1980s one of the most powerful men in America.

Elliott Abrams

#38. The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively.

M.H. Abrams

#39. I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.

M.H. Abrams

#40. At first, students tend to freeze at the first effort. The breakthrough comes when they realize that they can make it better - can identify what their purposes were and realize better ways to achieve those purposes.

M.H. Abrams

#41. When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.

M.H. Abrams

#42. I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite.

M.H. Abrams

#43. Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.

M.H. Abrams

#44. If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.

M.H. Abrams

#45. What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

J.J. Abrams

#46. I'm afraid the workings of J.J. Abrams' mind falls outside the predictive capacity of any coherent theory.

Antony Garrett Lisi

#47. I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

Casey Abrams

#48. I'm working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.

J.J. Abrams