Northrop Frye Quotes

Man is, and was always, a block-head and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider.

I always think before I speak. I'm not the sort who will just say anything that comes to my mind. I'm a very emotional and sensitive person. But I'm also very strong and know my mind well.

I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.

I think it's always the emotional situations that are more tricky to nail and get into because I don't want to pretend.

Be aware of emotional toxins as well as physical toxins. Be aware of what you are thinking. Clear yourself at the end of every day. Try not to go to bed angry or distressed or anxious or jealous or envious.

Yes and no are soon said, but give much to think over.

I've seen the end of the universe, and it happens to be in the United States and, oddly enough, it's in Houston, Texas. I know - I was shocked, too. Imagine my surprise when I left a comedy club one day and walked to the end of the block, and there on one corner was a Starbucks, and across the street from that Starbucks, in the exact same building as that Starbucks, there was - a Starbucks. I looked back and forth, thinking the sun was playing tricks with my eyes. That there was a Starbucks across from a Starbucks - and that, my friends, is the end of the universe.

This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

Una's face was an unbroken block of calculation, saving where, upon her upper lip, a little down of hair fluttered. Yet it gave one an uncanny feeling. It made one think of a tassel on a hammer.

The fact that the author thinks slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster than he thinks is inexcusable.

The mind is just like a crowd; thoughts are the individuals. And because thoughts are there continuously you think the process is substantial. Drop each individual thought and finally nothing is left. There is no mind as such, only thinking.

I always try to be careful when an actor who is like 70 walks onto my set at work, I don't want them to get called in five hours early or block shoot something. I think you need to treat them with respect and dignity.

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

There is a thread in our thoughts as there is a pulse in our feelings; he who can hold the one knows how to think, and he who can move the other knows how to feel.

I think a lot of the time, the studio system is so compelled to kowtow to its fear that women are not going to be found sympathetic. It just sort of euthanizes any hope of more diverse examples of the emotional realities of people. Representing my gender, I think, "Well, I have those emotions, why don't those ever get brought to the screen so I can feel recognized?"

The world I grew up in had both a literal and mythological quality. We were on the borders of several worlds - the larger black world bordered us on one side. More distantly, there was the larger white world. We interacted with some, but not others. If you think of it as an internal geography, it is a land, a contested space with these very charged historical, cultural, and emotional borders.

Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.

And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.

I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.

To concentrate is not to meditate, even though that is what most of you do, calling it meditation. And if concentration is not meditation, then what is? Surely, meditation is to understand every thought that comes into being, and not to dwell upon one particular thought; it is to invite all thoughts so that you understand the whole process of thinking.

As a fiction writer you train yourself to think about situations subjectively. I don't really care for narratives that are just A, B, C, D, and then E. I like the aura that fiction has, how it can conjure up dream imagery. It's a sort of emotional speculation that you can shape and work with.

The music is the imperative. It has the upper hand. I think all music, even though it's an abstraction, does motivate a particular meaning. Then it's the job of the musician to honor that meaning and to somehow implement lyrical material that can accommodate that emotional environment.

What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like "understand," "think," and indeed the word "meaning" itself.

[Topher Grace] is thought about what he's going to do and he has a lot of ideas. So there's that.