Theme Quotes

“There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen].""Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…""What is this one obsession?""I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it.""There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'""Inside the rain?""When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well.""It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…”

“There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen].""Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…""What is this one obsession?""I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it.""There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'""Inside the rain?""When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well.""It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…”

“If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.”

“The comedian sticks as religiously to her theme as a dancer sticks to a diet.”

“Once I realize that the tune I’m whistling in my head is the theme that’s driving my heart, I suddenly realize that the most important question I can ask is, “What are the lyrics?”

“Genesis began with the Father losing His family. Revelation ends with Him getting them back. Is there nothing to be learned from this sad cycle? Truly, family is the legitimate theme of holy text.pg vi”

“I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all.”

“We assert now that Being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy. This is not our own invention; it is a way of putting the theme which comes to life at the beginning of philosophy in antiquity, and it assumes its most grandiose form in Hegel's logic. At present we are merely asserting that Being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy. Negatively, this means that philosophy is not a science of beings but of Being or, as the Greek expression goes, ontology. We take this expression in the widest possible sense and not in the narrower one it has, say, in Scholasticism or in modern philosophy in Descartes and Leibniz.A discussion of the basic problems of phenomenology then is tantamount to providing fundamental substantiation for this assertion that philosophy is the science of Being and establishing how it is such. The discussion should show the possibility and necessity of the absolute science of Being and demonstrate its character in the very process of the inquiry. Philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation of Being, of Being's structure and its possibilities. Philosophy is ontological." ―from_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_”

“In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.”

“Thanksgiving is a season that is very much in accord with the themes and teachings of Jesus Christ.”

“The irony was not lost on any of us that despite the theme there was a robot on the throne.”