Quotes About Figure

So much of my work is defined by the difference between the figure in the foreground and the background. Very early in my career, I asked myself, "What is that difference?" I started looking at the way that a figure in the foreground works in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European paintings and saw how much has to do with what the figure owns or possesses. I wanted to break away from that sense in which there's the house, the wife, and the cattle, all depicted in equal measure behind the sitter.

I have a scenario but almost always it's entwined with at least one person to begin with. Then I sort of expand from there and I'm thinking about books novels. I've got these scrolls of paper that I hang up in my office and this is my idea room, my nightmare factory, and I have a big title at the top of the scroll and on the left hand side I have these character sketches on the characters, and then once I figure out who they are I can figure out what they want and once I figure out what they want I'm able to put obstacles in the way of that desire, and that's where plot springs from.

But here's the deal: If I were smart, I could figure out curling. If I were even smarter, I could figure out why people would actually watch other people doing it. I have tried. I can't. I can't even figure out the object of the game. Is it like darts? I just don't get it.

The only time I get frustrated with activist criticism is if I have recognized them, and invited them to work with me to figure out how we solve this problem that they're concerned about, and either they don't engage out of the sense of purity - "I'm not going to shake his hand" - or you're not sufficiently prepared so you don't even know what to ask for, or you're not being strategic as an activist and trying to figure out how the process has to work in order for you to get what you want.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

Knowing I wasn't going anywhere, I frantically searched for some way to help her. A dark figure caught my eye. "Christian!" I yelled. He'd been staring at Lissa's retreating figure but glanced up at the sound of his name. One of my escorts shushed me and took my arm. "Be quiet." I ignored her. "Go after her," I called to Christian. "Hurry." He just sat there, and I suppressed a groan. "Go, you idiot!" My guardians snapped at me to be quiet again, but something inside of Christian woke up. Springing up from his lounging position, he tore off in the direction Lissa had traveled.

I paint like an abstract painter everything is inside nothing is meant to be, I take tattoos off a people I take anything that's not necessarily going to be timeless. I want to get across what I feel and I just use the figure because I enjoy the figure.

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.

It is quite likely ... that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological "Christ of faith" a synthetic construct of theologians, a symbolic "Uncle Sam" figure, but if you could travel ... back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there.

It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.

The trick [in comedy] is always to figure out how real you're playing it and how real it's supposed to feel. That's a hard thing to figure out.

Bob Dylan had been a big sort of presence in my life but I'd never quite registered what he was trying to tell me. He was always this kind of figure, a sort of bear-like figure in the corner of the room. You know, every time I imagined what Bob Dylan looked like, he looked a bit like Steve Earl used to look - with the beard.

After all, when you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves, rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.

Donald Trump is sort of an Orwellian figure, an authoritarian figure who is twisting words in an Orwellian manner, "1984," to exercise power and control people's minds, or is he a 5-year-old who has an ego that needs to be fed, and the universe has to warp around his ego needs so he can feel good about himself, and everybody has to produce photos to make the monarch feel like he's made of gold.

A figure skater is not just a figure skater who does great jumps. He is an artist on ice.

I didn't think I was in a morbid mood, but it appears I am. My mind goes round and round trying to figure things out, but I always come back to the same two things: Loneliness and Death. Life ends before we figure anything out, most importantly how not to be lonely. Solitude is fine. But feeling like you have no one to love - abject lonliness - is not alright.

I'm trying to figure things out in the world. No one knows what this life thing is all about - there's no manual. Just trying to figure it out.

It is exciting to kind of figure things out in yourself and then use other people to help you figure things out so you can really reach your potential.

Drug warriors' staunch opposition to needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV in addicts delayed the programs' widespread introduction in most states for years. A federal ban on funding for these programs wasn't lifted until 2009. Contrast this with what happened in the U.K. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the HIV infection rate in IV drug users in the U.K. was about 1%. In New York City, the American epicenter, that figure was 50%. The British had introduced widespread needle exchange in 1986. That country had no heterosexual AIDS epidemic.

It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.

I've used Twitter now and again to try to figure something out; it's an amazing resource. But I think you have to use it judiciously: it's a self-selected group, so it's important not to start thinking of it as the whole world.

It's about time that we as Arabs take things into our own hands and figure out our own future, rather than [keep depending] on some outside force to do it for us... particularly when intervention by this outside force has not particularly been beneficial to the region in recent history.

Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.

There's so many great things that come with being successful. The one thing that is weird is trying to figure out whose intentions are in the right place, and who is really on your team.

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying. It's like teaching a child to walk. It may start by walking, but eventually it will fall. And I have kids, but I know that that will enable them to stand up again and understand why they fell, and how they can avoid that. They will walk better and faster, and stronger. Filmmaking is the same.

We improv-ed scenes that didn't happen in the movie. We improv-ed the scenes that are written in the movie without the dialogue as written. We played around a lot to try and figure out just how we could flow with what was already written in the story and how we could highlight those imbalances and those points at which we came to loggerheads.

You can't expect insights, even the big ones, to make you suddenly understand everything. But I figure: Hey it's a step in the right direction if they leave you confused in a deeper way.

For me, the most important thing is to continue to play well and to be a positive figure and hopefully a role model for kids as well.

No one talked about the fact that in this year under the Obama administration you've seen the highest casualties in Afghanistan. And the fact that it took him almost 90 days to figure out what his strategy is going to be was absolutely appalling.

After I discovered my degree in photojournalism would only get me a job in a camera store, I taught myself lighting. I read tons of magazines and books and studied the photos trying to figure out how they were done. I bought some flash equipment and played around until I figured out how to make a subject look as I envisioned it should look.

For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure.

In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done.

Let's review the cost-free techniques that we've learned so far for raising an achievement-oriented, obedient, drug-free, virgin adult: Calamity, Praise, Local Theater, and flat feet. Another key element is "Strong Father Figure / Fear Thereof."

I'm meeting a lot of musicians and people in the music business, and am constantly trying to figure out what I want to do with music. We'll see. I want to do everything.

I remember listening to Miles Davis in the car with my dad. I had just done my Grade 5 piano exam, and I was quite cocky. I said, 'It sounds like he's played the wrong note there.' I remember the look of horror on my dad's face, and thinking, 'Wow, I have to figure out why that is not acceptable.'

Inspiration means that you don't have to figure things out, or think about them. Ideas and answers pop into your head and the energy carries you forward, if you allow it. Planning. . . is a way of ritually killing inspiration, which transcends the need for planning.

All these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology. For whether the lineaments of the body, countenance, or hand be inspected, whether dream or vision be seen, whether marking of entrails or mad inspiration be consulted, there must be a Celestial Figure first erected, by the means of whole indications, together with the conjectures of Signs and Similitudes, they endeavour to find out the truth of what is desired.

But the name Magnus Bane made him think of a towering sort of figure, with huge shoulders and formal purple warlock’s robes, calling down fire and lightning. Not Magnus himself, who was more of a cross between a panther and a demented elf.

We're making so many images today and it's unbelievable. I shoot stuff all the time. I try to figure a lot out before I paint. I do a tremendous amount of shooting.

...There are also those who inadvertently grant power to another man's words by continuously trying to spite him. If a man gets to the point where he can simply say, 'The sky is blue,' and people indignantly rush up trying to refute him saying, 'No, the sky is light blue,' then, whether they realize it or not, he has become an authority figure even to such adversaries.

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.

If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

I sit here before you trying to figure out how to pay a tax debt? If that's not like enough to slavery, I don't know.

It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you?

Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.

You need 10,000 hours to figure out how to be good at something and I agree with that to a certain extent. It's like everything you do to lead up to a great recording or great performance is everything you've done in the past and you can't just, it's rare that someone wakes up in a void and goes and wakes up and makes the most brilliant recording or performance.