Quotes About Contemporary Life

#1. I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

Richard Powers

#2. It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times
the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie
seem attractive by comparison.

Christopher Lasch

#3. One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.

Joseph Campbell

#4. What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life?

Alfred Kazin

#5. Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind.

James Rosenquist

#6. A generous heart is never lonesome. A generous heart has luck. The lonesomeness of contemporary life is partly due to the failure of generosity. Increasingly we complete with each other for the goods, for image, and status.

John O'Donohue

#7. We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.

John Eaton

#8. Artists - musicians, painters, writers, poets - always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.

Billy Joel

#9. I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.

Jonathan Lethem

#10. To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life
not existing forms of dance.

Pina Bausch

#11. In the creation of a garden, the architect invites the partnership of the Kingdom of Nature. In a beautiful garden the majesty of nature is ever present, but it is nature reduced to human proportions and thus transformed into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life.

Luis Barragan

#12. My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feeling, models of care.

John Updike

#13. I am making an Enlightenment Capsule for the audience to meditate inside - virtual reality in which people can experience ancient ideas from the East ... But I'm not interested in using ancient things; rather I want to connect [audiences] with contemporary life through the technology we have now.

Mariko Mori

#14. Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life.

Gore Vidal

#15. The most difficult problems are naturally not involved in the search for forms for contemporary life. It is a question of working our way to forms behind which real human values lie.

Alvar Aalto

#16. Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

June Jordan

#17. [Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)

Pierre Mac Orlan

#18. The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.

Dallas Willard

#19. It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.

Sam Shepard

#20. I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

Toni Morrison

#21. I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life ... nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive.

Leonard Baskin

#22. I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.

Karen Kingsbury

#23. I wanted to revolutionise habits and contemporary life - to liberate nature, to free it from the authority of old theories and classicism ... I felt a tremendous urge to re-create a new world seen through my own eyes, a world which was entirely mine.

Maurice De Vlaminck

#24. The thinness of contemporary life. I can poke my finger through it.

Don DeLillo

#25. Our contemporary life is based on information that can change at any time.

DJ Spooky

#26. Polytheism may be more consonant with contemporary life, its mixed populations, and its recognition of psychic complexity and interdependence, than a rigorous Protestant monotheism.

Page DuBois

#27. All ideas about identity, of course, fit perfectly into the social media wonderland we live in. They seem to really connect. There's a science-fiction aspect to our contemporary life. What's virtual, what's real ...

Vijay Seshadri

#28. He already couldn't remember what it'd been like before her. He'd thought everything was great in his life but then he'd been thrown a curve ball in the form of this gorgeous, passionate woman who he suddenly couldn't get enough of. Which made it official. He was hers, completely.

Jill Shalvis

#29. Every minute I decide not to kill you is a minute your life is saved. You owe me everything.

Christina L. Barr

#30. Not everything worth learning is summarized in book. Sometimes you've got to rely on instincts.

Samanthe Beck

#31. When I was a teenager, I worked in New Orleans for a chef named Paul Prudhomme. That was a very important time in my life as a chef. I developed my palate and learned a lot. And here I am now. I specialize in modern Mexican and contemporary Latin cuisines.

Aaron Sanchez

#32. Mel rolled her eyes. "You can't live your life based on 'what-ifs,' Liv. And change is inevitable. It's the one thing you can always count on. Stop worrying about what might or not happen and follow your heart. How can you expect to ever be happy if you don't?

Alicia Kobishop

#33. The good news is that fear is a choice. You can stand in front of it, punch it in the face and get on with life. - Gabe

Courtney Cole

#34. Don't ever do anything for a man you don't want to do for you.

Amy Andrews

#35. My musical life started with hearing and being fascinated by contemporary music.

Elliott Carter

#36. Her life was more like a series of tattered Post-it notes with hastily scribbled goals written in dull pencil. Some of them stuck. Lots of them didn't.

Tracy Brogan

#37. I think that's why I love to read. I'll read almost anything - mystery, suspense, slice of life - but what I really love is romance. Contemporary is good, Historical is better, Paranormal is the best.

S.T. Prussing

#38. Cinderella was the first fairy tale I remember - the one I was most obsessed with because of the gowns and magic and pretty shoes. Yes, her home life was less than ideal - and considering the talking mice and birds, she probably needed serious therapy.

Cindi Madsen

#39. He covered my hand with his. No matter what happens, we're friends first. I hope you know how much having you in my life means to me.

Cindi Madsen

#40. ...this place, this life, the one we were building together, even with all its cracks and bumps and imperfections, this life was the one I needed, the one I wanted, and that best of all, it was home.

Kimberly Stuart

#41. Because some things in life just hurt so much that you need to feel physical pain to start to heal from it.

Kristen Hope Mazzola

#42. Their conversation was like root canal without anaesthesia.

Tan Redding

#43. I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

Ross Macdonald

#44. I thank God every day for bringing you into my life. I know I don't deserve you, but I'm a better man because of you.

Danielle Jamie

#45. So our narcissism has bared forth an unflattering nakedness that shames our species. But this is humanity. This is our condition.

Zack Love

#46. In those few words you've summed up my life - my reason for existence. It's you. Any pain I've suffered, the mistakes I've made, the path laid out for me have all led here - to you.

Tima Maria Lacoba

#47. Quinton: I think if every person had a Nova Reed in this world, then life would be a little sunnier.

Jessica Sorensen

#48. How much the pain grew inside him after Ossie died until the only way to deal with it was to throw himself into the fray. And the whole time, Vanessa's body was wrapped around him like she was the only one being strong as a shield while he stripped his life bare.

Melissa Cutler

#49. We are concerned with the relationship between art and life. Contemporary art is only intelligible in terms of its relationship to our life.

David Elliott

#50. Maybe Duke was just the kind of person you don't keep in your life, but the kind of person that changes your life forever.

Stephanie Witter

#51. You're beautiful, Jenna. i'm a man and I'm afraid to admit when I'm lucky enough to look at someone as beautiful as you.

E.L. Montes

#52. It is not often that I have two options to choose from. It is nice to be compelled towards something, otherwise one drifts through life unimpeded.
Bhanggi

Faiqa Mansab

#53. All the bad in my life led me to her, which makes me think that I can live with the past if she is my future. - HEW

Michelle Warren

#54. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

Zack Love

#55. Even though I knew this might end in heartbreak, that he might make my life scary and complicated and unpredictable, I knew I couldn't let him walk away. Because I knew he'd also make my life happy and comforting and full.

Kasie West

#56. When death becomes an escape, when it becomes attractive, the purpose of life is fulfilled. To teach one it's futility, it's worthlessness, that is the purpose of life. Incongruously, its value lies in having imparted that lesson.
Bhanggi

Faiqa Mansab

#57. The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.

Ernst Junger

#58. Truthfully, she was the best thing in his life and he was a complete idiot if he let her walk away from him.

Jill Shalvis

#59. She wanted his strong, capable hands on her blody and those soft lips locked with hers. She wanted to be held tight and kissed until she could forget-if only for a few precious minutes-that her life as she knew it had evaporated in a cloud of smoke and flame and violence.

Melissa Cutler

#60. I'm going to turn my life around. Make a complete three sixty."
"Don't you mean one eighty?" he corrected. "If you do that, you'll end up right back where you started."
"Maybe. But at least I'll have a chance of coming out of it a different person - a better version of me.

Megan Duke

#61. [F]or contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation ...

Nikolai Gogol

#62. I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.

Alan Furst

#63. Something new seems to be at work in the contemporary world - a process that is eating away the very heart of social life, not merely by putting salesmanship in place of moral virtue, but by putting everything - virtue included - on sale.

Roger Scruton

#64. Contemporary poets got so obscure that poetry kind of fell out of favor,

Paul Ruffin

#65. I want to make people smile. I want to tell an epic story ... with laughter. I want to change the way people view the world. I want life to stop being so damn dramatic all the time. I want ... what are you doing?

Cassie Mae

#66. After two decades there she was, in front of him, almost within touching distance, not faded like in his dreams, but bright and clear and vividly real, looking comfortably, almost defiantly, the same as she always had and then everything she had never been.

Tan Redding

#67. When I'd remember this night in weeks, months, or even years, it wouldn't be the sex. Sex would fade and so would the need to be filled with him, but right now I felt him inscribe his soul around my chest, and the reminder would be there with every beat for as long as I lived.

Rebecca Berto

#68. Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life."
Patricia Briggs.

Demetra Angelis Foustanellas

#69. The word "Guru", as it is used in the contemporary American scene, is someone who takes all your money and tells you what to do with your life. You assume no responsibility. A lot of people want that free ride.

Frederick Lenz

#70. A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low.

Jerry Saltz

#71. I find it rather depressing that the people you love most in this world can also be the same exact people you hate with fervor. But it can happen, trust me.
It was the f***ing story of my life.

Christina Channelle

#72. I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

Graeme Murphy

#73. If I could create something that is even minutely close to a small percentile of a genius as Cloud Atlas, I shall deem my life worthy!

K. Hari Kumar

#74. Is that the way you live your life, logic over emotion?"
"That's the way I run my business. Up to now, there hasn't been any overlap.

Alexia Adams

#75. So if you choose me, then you have declared me more special to you than anyone else, because only one man can have that honor.

Zack Love

#76. I love contemporary poetry because it moves between what we call poetry and what we call philosophy. It joins these fields and makes writing more natural, as in how it is lived in the person. We don't separate thinking from feeling in real life, so why should we separate it in writing?

Etel Adnan

#77. Why was life so unfair that the one guy she felt uncontrollable chemistry with
even when they weren't even touching
was the only guy she had to keep her hands off?

Ophelia London

#78. Choices and consequences. Choices and consequences.

Tan Redding

#79. This isn't so much romance as it is opportunity [victor mancini]

Chuck Palahniuk

#80. Sometimes, maybe we don't know exactly what we have until someone shows us.

Molly O'Keefe

#81. I've always loved writing emotionally rich, character-driven novels that explore the way people fall in love and deal with life's triumphs and tragedies. I enjoy writing the contemporary and historical books equally, though perhaps 'enjoy' is the wrong word.

Susan Wiggs

#82. Mortal man! You've wasted your time mostly with wrong and empty beliefs! And now you have started understanding that most important thing in life is existence!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#83. I want in your life, Elle. All the way in.

Jill Shalvis

#84. Ronan cupped her neck with his other hand and brushed his lips lightly over hers. "I want you, Maddy. I want you more than I've ever wanted any woman in my life.

Sara Humphreys

#85. Stella couldn't believe this was happening. Gavin and Holden were both in her bed and just as desperate for her as she was for them. Her life had morphed into a cross between a romance novel and a porno. If she was dreaming, she didn't ever want to wake up.

Amanda Young

#86. Wanting Kate was one thing. Sex was simple. Or it could be. But liking her?
Enjoying spending time with her? Allowing her into his private life, as Brody had tonight, albeit at his sisters' invitation? It would lead to nothing but trouble.

Jackie Braun

#87. She was saying words she didn't totally believe yet. And maybe I was, too. But I wanted them to be true. For the first and only time in my life, I wanted to belong to someone and have that person belong to me.

Molly O'Keefe

#88. It is the misfortune of contemporary leaders, across the whole spectrum of Australian life, that the community's demand for strong leadership is growing in direct proportion to our lack of confidence in ourselves. The end of this century is an unusually difficult time to be a leader in Australia.

Hugh Mackay

#89. I love you like the woman I am now. Not the girl I was. I'm battered and bruised and I'm tougher, but I'm still here. I'm scared to death, but I'm more frightened of a life without you.

Amy Andrews

#90. I wish I could stop this one moment, capture it, because I know it won't last.
Because a guy like him doesn't stay in a woman's life. He breezes through and leaves only havoc behind.

J.C. Reed

#91. In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.

Brian Joyce

#92. Life had a way of shifting under her feet like quicksand and she had learned to just make the best of it. Like Gigi always said, 'when God closes a door, he shoves you out the window.

Tracy Brogan

#93. I have to wonder," Aaron said, 'does your conscience whack you upside the head every time you contemplate taking a little time to just enjoy life?' - from Fly Away With Me

Susan Fox

#94. He was working that charm right now on the trainer who kneeled before him and touched his thigh as though it were the thigh of David, Michelangelo's glorious statue come to life right here on court.

A.G. Starling

#95. Human experience is not nest and orderly, ready to be coded into predetermined categories. Real life is messy

Jennifer Gold

#96. Katie, when I saw you again, there was nothing I wanted to do more than stand by your side for the rest of my life.

Faith Sullivan

#97. I had never had a big opinion for myself. I had always thought I'd be a fuck up, that I'd be disappointed like always by life and people. But at this very moment, I knew it. I wasn't a good man, not well-adjusted. - Nolan

Stephanie Witter

#98. I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.

Aberjhani

#99. Get married because you can't imagine another day without talking with that person, because that person makes your day sunnier. Don't get married because you don't want to be alone.

Lynne Silver

#100. It was his experience that life worked under the same guidelines as a capitalistic society. In order to get what you wanted, it was usually necessary to give up something in return. Sometimes gaining what you defined as everything meant losing what you most needed.

Roy L. Pickering Jr.