Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you.
The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam - those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that's legitimate.
In all great epochs of history, the existence of standards - that is, the conscious adoption of type-forms - has been the criterion of a polite, well-ordered society; for it is a commonplace that repetition of the same things for the same purpose exercises a settling and civilizing influence on men's minds.
The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave - caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition - cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner.
There are still deep-seated structural problems that threaten the economic balance in the world: Between the United States and China, for example, but also within Europe. We have taken a few steps toward taming the financial markets, but we haven't come nearly far enough to rule out a repetition of the crisis.
There are some designers who flash and burn - Courreges is an example of that. But he still marked fashion history. And I don't think that longevity is always a badge of honor. Modern brand management means that we are always celebrating birthdays, when what is exciting about fashion is innovation, not repetition.
If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.
The early Stones were adolescent rockers. They were self-conscious in an obvious and unpretentious way. And they were committed to a musical style that needed no justification because it came so naturally to them. As they grew musically the mere repetition of old rock and blues tunes became increasingly less satisfying.
An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.
I always talk about shooting being broken down into three things. You have to have some semblance of good form. The second part is repetition: doing things over and over again until you really develop a skillset. And then the third part is confidence. But for me, you can't have confidence without having that second part.
When doing theater, you have to find great satisfaction in the small things. There's going to be a repetition and a redundancy night after night, but it's the small variations in those moments - a word, a tone of voice, the smallest sense of enlightenment that can happen in an instant onstage - that will be the most rewarding.
Repetition is hell. How can we get out of those cycles of violence? How come we are still today talking about peace in Israel? How come we're not able to find a solution yet? Something that will bring peace in this part of the world? It's the same in a lot of places in the world right now. How come we are not able to find peace?
If someone said, 'You can go live in this little town in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks and all you've got to do is sing for us,' I would do that. That's more exciting to me than the prospect of going on some national tour, where you're going to play arenas or sheds every night, because of the crushing repetition of that kind of line.
If you have multiples of anything, you have the possibility of repetition. Repetition creates pattern and also unity. Put anyone in a room with a pile of similar objects and say, 'I want a pattern by 3 P.M. or no dinner.' Anyone would come up with a design. It is easy, fun and available to anybody. Most people just don't have the nerve.
Christians are as subject to complacency as anybody else, and we can certainly settle into repetition and forget that something radical and extraordinary is being asked of us as well - that we hold to an extraordinary promise about how, from moment to moment, something enters the world and enters us, after which everything is different.
With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing 'philosophy of the universe' through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call 'stereotypical repetition.'