Quotes About Subject Matter

#1. Any radical change or trauma always makes for interesting subject matter, but then all stories deal, to some extent, with the disjuncture between past and present.

Damon Galgut

#2. [It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. [ ... ] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)

Neil Postman

#3. Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.

Epictetus

#4. There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations

Alfred North Whitehead

#5. I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.

Tom Wesselmann

#6. The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

Lupe Fiasco

#7. I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

Tea Obreht

#8. To be joining 'The Hunger Games' family is such a thrill. It deserves the hype because it's well written, handles really big subject matter, but doesn't talk down to its audience. And then there's the romance element.

Natalie Dormer

#9. Entrepreneurs must be practical experts. They needn't set out to be subject matter experts in what they do; they must set out to solve a problem or pursue some cause or purpose greater than themselves.

Simon Sinek

#10. As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

James Whistler

#11. I think the American Western laid down a kind of subject matter that's about following your instinct or following your gut and having a sort of removed quality from your humanity. And I think Clint Eastwood helped to establish that.

Anson Mount

#12. My cheeks flushed, and I felt a wave of warmth throughout my body, but not because of the subject matter. Because she had used the word us.
It was one of those times when you don't realize how lonely you are until, suddenly, there's someone by your side.

I. W. Gregorio

#13. The student is infinitely more important than the subject matter.

Nel Noddings

#14. What immersion has taught us is that comprehensible subject-matter teaching is language teaching - the subject matter class is a language class if it is made comprehensible. In fact, the subject-matter class may even be better than the language class for language acquisition.

Stephen D. Krashen

#15. Grace is not a theology. It is not a subject matter. It is not a doctrine. It is a person, and his name is Jesus. That's the reason the Lord wants you to receive the abundance of grace, for to have the abundance of grace is to have the abundance of Jesus.

Joseph Prince

#16. What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Henri Matisse

#17. Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter.

Seneca.

#18. The riskiness of Art, the reason why it affects us, is not the riskiness of its subject matter, it is the risk of creating a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking.

Jeanette Winterson

#19. All of our columnists have areas of interest and expertise that they will return to frequently, but the subject matter of any given column is up to them.

Andrew Rosenthal

#20. There is a real formula to writing music, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. It's very formulaic. The subject matter that you can address in pop music is somewhat restricted. It just doesn't allow that same emotive quality that you can put into poetry.

Edgar Winter

#21. When a painter is working he is aware of the means which are available to him - these include his materials, the style he inherits, the conventions he must obey, his prescribed or freely chosen subject matter - as constituting both an opportunity and a restraint.

John Berger

#22. If there is a widely shared concept of intentional action ... a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter.

Alfred Mele

#23. I think if you're writing from the heart, very often, the subject matter will adjust as you age ... but you try to write the best song you can possibly write. For us, we have the same basic elements that make up the America sound.

Gerry Beckley

#24. The workmanship was better than the subject matter.

Ovid

#25. The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author.

Boris Pasternak

#26. 'Playboy' made the good life a reality for me and made it the subject matter of my paintings - not affluence and luxury as such, but joie de vivre itself.

LeRoy Neiman

#27. In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.

Ben Mendelsohn

#28. The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach.

Meladee McCarty

#29. I like to stack them up on the shelf and move them about and rearrange them according to new parameters-height, color, thickness, provenance, publisher, author's nationality, subject matter, likelihood that I will ever read them. Then I put them back the way they were.

Joe Queenan

#30. I'm attracted to images that come from a personal exploration of a subject matter. When they have a personal stamp to them, then I think it becomes identifiable.

Leonard Nimoy

#31. I'm lucky that my real-life Mom has both a great sense of humor about herself and an amazing ability to slip into complete denial if the subject matter gets a little too close to home.

Cathy Guisewite

#32. I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That's very important.

Robert Wise

#33. Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.

Bertrand Russell

#34. The subject matter of daydreams has been determined by modern science to vary widely, ranging from having sex with a stranger on a train to having sex with a coworker to having sex with Mila Kunis.

Colin Nissan

#35. I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

Kenneth Noland

#36. No amount of virtuosic skill and choice of subject matter can be a substitute for depth and poetry.

Scott Kahn

#37. One of the things I've learned as a filmmaker is to have some aspect of the movie be something that I admire greatly, whether that's an actor I'm working with, the subject matter, or a book.

James Franco

#38. I'm not really a conspiracy nut, but I think if I went down a slightly different route in my life instead of meeting and marrying the person I met, I may have gone down this other direction and got myself stuck in my head with my ideas and my thoughts and I'm into UFOs and paranormal subject matter.

Rhys Darby

#39. I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.

Kathryn Lasky

#40. All research in the cultural sciences in an age of specialization, once it is oriented towards a given subject matter through particular settings of problems and has established its methodological principles, will consider the analysis of the data as an end in itself.

Max Weber

#41. I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter.

Haile Gerima

#42. Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.

Jeffery Deaver

#43. The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you're a moron, you're going to get a really strong photograph.

Andy Summers

#44. That subject matter has never left me ... The more you're in the material world, the more there is a tendency for a search for serenity and a need to not be distracted by physical elements that are around you.

Martin Scorsese

#45. One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from.

Francis Bacon

#46. Some of the subject matter is a little less weighty. When we were writing for Mr. Show, we were talking about how is this going to stand up to the test of time. Every little piece had to be this brilliant comedy jewel.

B. J. Porter

#47. The kind of stuff I usually read is a bit more on the literary side, like books that I think are influential in the sense that they're doing pulpy subject matter in a refined way. Like 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy; I loved that book.

Isaac Marion

#48. If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#49. The subject matter of the stories on the surface ... there seem to be a number of stories about travel.

Kenneth Koch

#50. It's not always the style of tattooing but the rather the subject matter that drives me. I love tattooing anything from mythology to comic book superheroes.

William Webb

#51. The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

Gordon Parks

#52. The times I've tried not to be funny, it's never worked, and the times I'm trying not to be dark and just be funny, that never works, either. As varied as my subject matter is, I think the worldview is pretty consistent: seeing darkness and seeing humor.

Rebecca Makkai

#53. I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.

Robert Frank

#54. Like qualitative and quantitative research, historical references, and subject matter interviews - help UX designers to discover unique problems for a specific set of target customers.

Anonymous

#55. I think, 'How could anybody mock a good pop song?' It is timeless; it transcends barriers; it breaks down every single type of social barrier that you can possibly have. It can deal with the most difficult subjects, even if it abstracts the subject matter.

Mika.

#56. I chose films made by people I wanted to work with, about subject matter I thought was intriguing.

Ed Harris

#57. And that was what all the expressions felt like - masks. I didn't believe them. They were too thorough, too nuanced; they were never at odds with his subject matter.

Helen Oyeyemi

#58. You never know whether the subject matter will click with the audience at that particular time. I wish there was a formula, you know, 'That plus that equals success.'

Michelle Yeoh

#59. Love is such a powerful subject matter because it comes in so many different shapes and sizes. It's about timing, fate, failure, redemption.

Jim Sturgess

#60. As an actor, you want new challenges. U.S. TV can be very formulaic. So when something gets a reaction, as 'The Slap' has, that's great. The sense I get is that it's not about me or my performance. More than anything it's the subject matter that people are focused on.'

Jonathan LaPaglia

#61. THE DYING GAUL is a Hollywood satire. But Hollywood is not the real subject matter here. My play uses that world of high-rolling big money - that crazy-making business - to examine a whole range of subjects..

Craig Lucas

#62. When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

Edward Weston

#63. To decide to reach for this blue and not that one, to switch styles or subject matter, to move, in the middle of a sentence, in one direction or another, to commit to this book when that one is also calling, are the sorts of choices that artists must make if they are to function.

Eric Maisel

#64. I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

Woody Allen

#65. The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told.

Jerry Saltz

#66. Some people might think that the paintings are involved with a mythic - not just subject matter - but a certain sort of physical space that the paintings occupy ... like personages.

Julian Schnabel

#67. In LA I was watching At the Movies with Ebert and Roper, it was, nice to see them differentiate between the subject matter and the art form of making the film, and they both gave it thumbs up, and I was kind of pleased at their honesty as far as reviewers go.

Michael Berryman

#68. Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it.

Laura Hillenbrand

#69. Most of us, when we go out with a camera in our own country, try to find exotic subject matter to photograph.

Martin Parr

#70. His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of Literature. Some were vertical, some horizontal, and some actually placed behind others. Mine were balkanized by nationality and subject matter.

Anne Fadiman

#71. It would be a serious oversight to limit our understanding of the impact of theology to strictly religious art, and overlook its pervasive role in shaping human understanding and artistic expression thereof within any given culture-regardless of the subject matter at hand.

John Walford

#72. The figure is still the only thing I have faith in in terms of how much emotion it's charged with and how much subject matter is there.

Jim Dine

#73. Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life.

Epictetus

#74. I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

David Bowie

#75. A letter is the most basic - yet the most flexible - mode of correspondence, regardless of its subject matter.

Scribendi

#76. I wrote a spec script that people really liked: a political serial based on Jeffrey's Toobin's 'A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.' It was the first thing I had ever written with any political subject matter in it.

Peter Gould

#77. Genuineness is often sacrificed in order to showcase the author's control over the form and subject matter, the end result technically sound but emotionally cold.

Jennifer S. Davis

#78. I'm fascinated by offensive subject matter. Always have been. It is very natural to me, as any teach I've ever had growing up could attest.

Anthony Jeselnik

#79. Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.

John Dewey

#80. Once the subject matter of rock n' roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, 'Oh, that's what they're doing. That's kind of - that's art.'

David Chase

#81. Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality ... The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.

Evelyn Underhill

#82. A woman is subject matter enough.

Claude Chabrol

#83. I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.

Jerry Saltz

#84. The portrait is the subject matter in photography where the problems of the media are the most visible.

Thomas Struth

#85. I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf.

Laura Hillenbrand

#86. theology is the rare science that finds it necessary to demonstrate the very existence of its subject matter.

Sherwin T. Wine

#87. Profound subject matter can be encompassed in small space - for proof, look at any sonnet by Shakespeare!

Cynthia Ozick

#88. If you've done what you intended and if nobody tampered with it, then it's yours. And if people don't like it, then they just don't agree with you on that subject matter, and that's life.

Clint Eastwood

#89. Pretty much everything that I pick, when it comes to choosing roles, is just based on things and materials that grabs me. It's pretty much the subject matter that I gravitate towards.

Brittany Snow

#90. Usually at the core of fiction that has some element of the absurd there tends to be an examination of some societal ills that we should talk about more than we do. And it's funny, of course, so we have that release valve with absurdism. It offers us a safe way to explore difficult subject matter.

Laurie Foos

#91. A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.

E. M. Forster

#92. I've done Graham Norton's show three times now. He tackles taboos and subject matter that wouldn't make it past the censors in the States.

Kyle MacLachlan

#93. I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.

Stewart Copeland

#94. I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

Mark Millar

#95. Song: Heloise and Abelard by Elizabeth Devlin. Beyond the a propros subject matter, this lady can really play the Autoharp. This song sounds like something you'd find on a gramophone record.

Lauren Groff

#96. However, it is not the same with the subject matter, but, generally speaking, that which is true and better is naturally always easier to prove and more likely to persuade.

Aristotle.

#97. Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

Alan Lightman

#98. To go from politics to news, at least the subject matter is the same, even if the view is different.

Jerry Springer

#99. 'Need You Now' is a universal subject matter. It's something that not just country fans, not just pop fans - everybody's been there. And the production was a little left of center.

Hillary Scott

#100. In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.

John Szarkowski