Themes For Quotes

#1. ...there are no new themes for a writer, only new ways of setting down old themes, new eyes to wander among old rocks.

Jim Crumley

#2. I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

Horace Walpole

#3. Fiscal responsibility and government reform are going to be good themes for governing, well at any time, but particularly coming out of a recovery.

Bob McDonnell

#4. I've firmly come to the conclusion that there are no 'themes' for me anymore. I can't be told who to hate, who to fight, who to subdue - I only see an 'us' in my heart.

Ram Dass

#5. Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events.

Thomas Lynch

#6. Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny.

Nicolas Gomez Davila

#7. I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

Gillian Armstrong

#8. I have a baby that is 21 months old, and I watch Disney Junior with him. A lot of those shows are about pirates. Even the T-shirts and pajamas I buy for him have pirate themes like, 'Aye-aye, argh and mate.' But, I definitely grew up watching pirates.

Yasmine Al Masri

#9. You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

Edward Norton

#10. Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages ... and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.

Tiffany Reisz

#11. It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things.

David Wroblewski

#12. I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.

Ron Ben-Israel

#13. In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#14. I understand now why Hillary Clinton always wore navy blue pantsuits. Remember, for four years? If you have one or two themes, then you have the same shoes, the same bag. Otherwise, it's a nightmare.

Amy Klobuchar

#15. I always thought of vampires, especially the young-adult ones, as a metaphor for sex - sucking blood, forbidden, taboo. I think they just ooze sex. Vampires are all the big themes in life in one attractive, bloodsucking package.

Melissa De La Cruz

#16. She sighed once, wishing she had a talent for the details of telling stories. She wasn't bad at themes, she mused, but she could never figure out how to turn a theme into an engaging tale.

Nora Roberts

#17. One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up.

H.L. Mencken

#18. I remember when one dressed the part for the West End, and strolled with yellow gloves and a walking-stick. But that world has gone, and another takes its place, eyes see differently, emotions react to other themes. Men weep at jazz, and violence has become sexual. Time marches on.

Charlie Chaplin

#19. I am against great themes and great subjects ... You can't film an idea. The camera is an instrument for recording physical impact.

Jean Renoir

#20. Whatever direction your life takes, your underlying themes remain. Discover and explore your themes to open the way for rich creative development.

Nita Leland

#21. Issues of power, control, energy fuels, and political strength have become key themes in our current events. We have come a long way from iron spearheads to nuclear warheads, yet the disease of power used for control and domination has remained.

Anodea Judith

#22. Most of the time when "universal" is used, it's just a euphamism for "white"; white themes, white significance, white culture.

Merle Woo

#23. The commonalities include the following, in the order of the Moses myth as in the Bible. For the exact book or tablet in which these themes appear, please consult the epic itself.

D.M. Murdock

#24. I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No nuances. I stay away from psychoanalyst's couch scenes. Couches are good for one thing.

John Wayne

#25. Writing, for all that it's harder than nursing ever was, is also more joyous and more fun and a lot less dangerous. And the major themes of my life have become the major themes of my writing, too - so it has all worked out pretty well.

Holly Lisle

#26. ...the work of his favourite painter at the time, brett whitely, seemed to offer some focus for his rebellious attitude towards moribund suburban melbourne. cave was intrigued by the intensity and diversity of the themes that the sydney-based painter included in his landscapes

Ian Johnston

#27. The 1930s birthed two great agrarian novels: 'Gone with the Wind' from the viewpoint of the ruling class, 'The Grapes of Wrath' for the underclass. And both were turned into movies that dared to be true to the books' controversial themes.

Richard Corliss

#28. I carry themes in my mind for years before I will try to compose them. I've got themes that will last me now 'til I die.

R. B. Kitaj

#29. In the past, like for the last Rilo Kiley record, 'Under the Blacklight,' I wore exclusively hot pants because the themes in that record were the underbelly of Los Angeles.

Jenny Lewis

#30. I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring.

Marisha Pessl

#31. The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!

Milan Kundera

#32. All the themes of incipient fascism are present, to some degree, in our present-day political culture: the fear of the Other, the need for a (powerless) scapegoat, including the theme of expansionism.

Justin Raimondo

#33. Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true.

Morris Gleitzman

#34. I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.

Julian Casablancas

#35. For me writing and filmmaking is a therapeutic process. It reflects themes that I'm going through at a time in my life.

Mark Webber

#36. When authors claim new revelations dealing with apocalyptic themes, book sales increase. Christians who chase after the sensational constantly look for keys to unlock the mysteries of the apocalypse.

Stan Newton

#37. In an age when stagecraft, gauzy themes, and sound-bites have too often been substituted for leadership, Bill Clinton as a candidate made it essential to campaigning to take the specifics of governance seriously. Practical solutions were 'in;' ideology was 'out.'

Sylvia Mathews Burwell

#38. An Associated Press report called the President's antics 'Bible-thumping politics.' Clinton's message was decidedly religious and partisan, as was Governor's Cuomo's remarks as he 'also cited religious themes and maxims.' Why didn't the press, the ACLU, and People for the American Way cry foul?

Gary DeMar

#39. 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

#40. One of my themes is that there is good and evil in everyone. I was not out to make these guys heroes. I really don't believe in heroes. The best of people have a dark side and it's a constant struggle for the better side to survive and to thrive.

William Friedkin

#41. Writing for children, you do bear a responsibility to not include overt or graphic adult content that they are not ready for and don't need, or to address adult concepts or themes from an oblique angle or a child's limited viewpoint, with appropriate context, without being graphic or distressing.

Garth Nix

#42. To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.

Washington Irving

#43. They're classic themes, which is why I think it's such a great story to look at again. The concept of being loyal to your friends, to the point where you'd even die for them, is a great subject.

Adrian Hodges

#44. I never think about themes. I let the music create itself. I like it to be a potpourri of all kinds of sounds, all kinds of colors, something for everybody, from the farmer in Ireland to the lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem.

Michael Jackson

#45. In the household in which I was raised, the themes were pretty simple. 'Work hard. Don't quit. Be appreciative, be thankful, be grateful, be respectful. Also, never whine, never complain. And always, for crying out loud, keep a sense of humor.'

Michael Keaton

#46. One of the great themes of the Christian Bible is that, whenever God asks us to do something for him, he gives us the gifts we need to do it. Knowing us for what we are, he equips us for what he wants us to do.

Alister E. McGrath

#47. One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers - anyone who wants to work in the business. Your voice counts. Your vision matters.

Melissa Silverstein

#48. In my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the major themes in science.

Eugenie Scott

#49. 'Dirty Jobs' is a fun, simple little show with huge themes under it. For me, it's penance, it's redemption, it's a sweaty mess.

Mike Rowe

#50. I don't think writers really choose their subjects. I think the subjects, the topics, the themes, choose us, and then we make the most of what we have. For Trollope, society; for Roth, Jews. For me, apparently, love. Why hide it?

Amy Bloom

#51. For me, life and death are very important themes. There is no life without death. That's why it's very important to me.

Tite Kubo

#52. I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.

Claude Monet

#53. This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#54. Well, I never got into the young adult headspace. With 'Twilight,' they are pretty adult themes, aside from maybe the first one, but even that. They're very adult themes, actually, particularly as the characters age. I never wrote for young adults. I wrote for myself, as an audience.

Melissa Rosenberg

#55. I had worked for George Bush as a speechwriter, and I read a lot of White House memoirs. They all have two themes: 'It Wasn't My Fault' and 'It Would Have Been Much Worse if I Hadn't Been There.'

Christopher Buckley

#56. I can hear some of you groaning as you read this section. "Great," you're saying. "I have to put a theme in my book? Themes are only for that 'high literature' stuff that gets taught in universities, not for my nice, entertaining genre fiction.

Libbie Hawker

#57. Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.

Marguerite Yourcenar

#58. You know, a vampire book is not a book to be the vehicle for big themes and stuff, where sometimes when you're dealing with art or the life of Christ or the oeuvre of Shakespeare, you know, it's a little more ambitious.

Christopher Moore

#59. I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.

Philip Kerr

#60. Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.

Susan Cain

#61. What gets made that's considered for men - it's really just T&A stuff. It's not stuff than any guy I know really wants to watch, you know, the stuff with jiggling boobs and all that. Something with real sort of male themes and male strength and things I want to watch in a drama.

Edward Allen Bernero

#62. I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.

D.W. Griffith

#63. There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

Edgar Allan Poe

#64. I'm happy to talk in general themes, but when we get down to specifics about my family, for me that's always been off-limits.

J.K. Rowling

#65. I want readers turning pages until three o'clock in the morning. I want the themes of books to stick around for a reader. I'm always trying to find a way to balance characters and theme.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#66. The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action.

Russell Kirk

#67. I don't necessarily look for dark themes; they just seem to appear.

Clint Eastwood

#68. Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" - Philip Pullman
(Hunt and Lenz, 2001, p. 122 as cited by Hunt, 2005, p. 204)

Philip Pullman

#69. Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.

Alanis Morissette

#70. I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.

Pam Houston

#71. Thrills, chills, spine-tingling mystery, and lots of smiles. It's not easy to combine heart-pounding danger with gut-busting laughs and make it work, but Peterson pulls it off. For readers who want nonstop action infused with powerful, life-changing themes, North! Or Be Eaten is a must-read.

Wayne Thomas Batson

#72. I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names/subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc.

Hilton Als

#73. People don't think their dreams amount to much, but when I ask them to examine them for common themes, they surprise themselves at how accurate they are! They see that their dreams have value.

Henry Reed

#74. --In his themes and techniques, Conrad was a liberator:he eloquently questioned what other people took for granted.

Cedric Watts

#75. What do we really want to say to the world? Three main themes. The inability to find completion in our modern society, the inability to find completion within ourselves, and the new way to be human in what Christ offers us - His love and His perfect plan of redemption for us.

Jon Foreman

#76. I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.

John Boyne

#77. If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

Anthony Burgess

#78. The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.

George Leonard

#79. The 80s were deranged. People had all these liberties all of a sudden and all the freedom in the world, the Less Than Zero sort of themes that came from that period, I think electronic music works very well for that whole idiom.

Sam De Jong

#80. Above these universal themes 'Truth Will Set U Free' is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it.

Corey Hart

#81. As far as CGI and hand-drawn animation, I consider them both nothing more than tools for drawing pictures, the same as crayons or oils. Which is why, to me, the most important thing is what it is you are drawing, and in the themes that I depict, I think hand-drawing is the most effective.

Mamoru Hosoda

#82. I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

David Maraniss