Quotations Weblog

As I’ve built this site over the years, one of my favorite pastimes was finding quotations about quotations. Along with being introspective, these quotations also serve to justify the existence of a site like this—or to question its existence. Our subject page on quotations has 53 of these meta-quotes.

Continuing the my favorite quotations series, here are my favorite quotations about quotations.

We are living in a time when music is more available to us than it has ever been before. Not only does music play across the radio waves every couple of hours (between commercials and non-sensical DJs), we can purchase music easily from iTunes or Yahoo! Music. With the advent of the Creative Commons Copyright phenomenon, we can download free music from a wide variety of sites. We truly are lucky.

Little Miss George Eliot would be so happy right now. I can just imagine her now, downloading tunes and ripping CDs. I wonder if she would have been so literary if she had as much music to distract her as we do.

Some Creative Commons Music Resources:

• Opsound: Open Sound Resource – copyleft music and sound

• Magnatune: MP3 music and music licensing (royalty free music and license music).

• dmusic.com | Your Digital Music Oasis

• SoundClick – Free MP3 music download and much, much more.

This entry from Ward Jenkins at the Ward-O-Matic has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks now. He describes his fanboy meeting with Frank and Ollie, two of the Nine Old Men from Disney.

• The Ward-O-Matic: Meeting Giants

Ward was a young animator-to-be and he was thrilled to meet the two of them. Ollie was sick, but Frank was able to give him a piece of advice:

When I saw this, I realized that this was incredibly good advice for writers as well as animators. I think I have the WRITE, WRITE, WRITE down pat. I just need to work on my observation and communication skills.

Sometimes I have an idea that I want to tell and the words won’t flow from my brain to my fingertips. Sometimes I feel like I am in a haze or fog and I can’t see the world around me because I am so wrapped up in my own thoughts. I feel like I should have those three sentences tattooed on my wrist so I will always remember them.

I guess the WRITE, WRITE, WRITE part will give me the practice that I need. I just need to remember to keep my eyes open and blow the haze around my head away.

Based on the movies that I have rated highly, NetFlix said that I would like this movie. I had never heard of it, but I put it on my list and it came up a month or so ago.

Mike saw it on the table. “What’s that?”

“It’s “View from the Top.” It’s some movie NetFlix recommended.”

“Isn’t it some Mike Meyers movie?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s like “Legally Blonde,” but a whole lot more believable.”

“I think the commercials made it seem like a Mike Meyers movie.”

It’s not. Mike Meyers is a character in the movie and he makes it pretty funny in a goofball sort of way. Most importantly, it’s one of those inspiring types of movies that makes you just want to go for your dreams in a big way.

My favorite quotes from the movie:

One well-defined trait of the human race is that we like to divide each other up into opposite categories: good or bad, friend or enemy, young or old, wise or foolish. Perhaps that’s why there are so many quotations that begin with the words “There are two kinds of people”:

While these kinds of generalizations are fun and a great way to make a point, the reality is that there are millions of kinds of people, and it’s wise to remember that people just might be more than the category you’ve assigned them to. Robert Benchley has the final word on this topic: