Style Vs Substance Quotes

the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes.

You see, I read reviews of people like Paul Simon, and they don't talk about the fact that he's looking old or whether he is fashionable; they talk about the music, which is how it should be.

Playing quarterback ... it's no joke ... The difference here with Johnny Manziel, there's a lot of style and very little substance.

It's easy to write a good column if you've got good information. It's hard if you have to depend on style alone. I suppose there are people who can get away with styling on a regular basis. I'm not one of them. You're probably not, either.

Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.

One of my biggest pet peeves is well-dressed designers. If you spend that much time thinking about your own clothes, you're not spending enough time thinking about what you're designing.

Too many rockers put on the leather pants and shirt first. But if you write good songs, the pants and shirt will follow.

I've often been asked why my shot-taking is not stylish, why I don't think about visual statements. The truth is, style is irrelevant. I never think of the shot as much as I think of the characters and what they are saying and doing.

Discerning placement of a comma does not atone for a spiritual coma.

I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.

Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you're not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements.

This is sad. I just think it’s a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It’s a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I’m so proud to be one of you and I don’t care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it’s up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN!

Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that's a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It's about music.