Erwin Chargaff Quotes

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.

We now live in the era of the super-specialist - of clinicians who have taken the time to practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone who hasn't.

A specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less.

I know a lot about a few things - mostly useless things.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.

Every one of my opponents, every one of my critics, will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin in an age when this is not done anymore, when responsible knowledge is specialized knowledge.

Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.

Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said 90 percent of successful moviemaking is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with, is a unique variable in all of our experiences and it is hugely important in making us who we are. Seek out interesting characters, tough adversaries and strong mentors and your life can be rich, textured, highly entertaining and successful, like a Best Picture winner. Surround yourself with dullards, people of vanilla safety and unextraordinary ease, and you may find your life going straight to DVD.

The essence of the expert is that his field shall be very special and narrow: one of the ways in which he inspires confidence is to rigidly limit himself to the little toe; he would scarcely venture an off-the-record opinion on an infected little finger.

A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.

Sometimes if I stick in a character too much I feel like I might start to get blinkered, because I'm making my decisions too definite.

A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something.

A man cannot be professor of zoölogy on one day and of chemistry on the next, and do good work in both. As in a concert all are musicians,-one plays one instrument, and one another, but none all in perfection.

Playing a character that allows me to play around with some of the feelings I have inside of myself and explore them - and maybe put them to rest a little bit, or at least come to terms with them - feels successful to me. I think it's about believing in what you do.

For those of us at Marvel Television, it always begins with the story. It's all about the script. It's making sure it's there, on the page. So, we needed to go to a group of individuals who have not only created some of the most memorable animated characters, like Ben 10 and Generator Rex, but also had done two seasons of our very successful Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man series, and that's the Man of Action guys. But, it wasn't just that.

I think that comics and television, as mediums, go hand in hand. Both tell long-form, continuing stories that are parsed out into little chapters and, if are successful, continue for years and years. What that means to me, as a writer, is it tells stories of transformation and evolution as characters.

Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor.

Definition: CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

You have to do three things really well to make a successful film. You have to tell a compelling story that has a story that is unpredictable, that keeps people on the edge of their seat where they can't wait to see what happens next. You then populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters. And then, you put that story and those characters in a believable world, not realistic but believable for the story that you're telling.

I think a lot of creators are attracted to those toys they got to play with when they were young, and everyone wants to write a Superman story or a Batman story or a Spider-Man story. I don't know, if it's been successful for me, it should be successful for anyone. "Hit the ground with your feet running" is the secret of breaking new characters when it seems like no one else is having any luck.

Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture. For example, in education, a teacher might say in the next class he was going to "explain Young's modulus and how to measure it," rather than, "I am going to educate the students and prepare them for their future careers".

What could be more important than equipping the next generation with the character and competence they need to become successful

I love the supporting characters because you get to do more, to be totally honest. It's been sort of a theme with me. In Son of No One, I think I might have seven lines in the entire movie because everything is happening to my character.