Quotes About Structure

she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.

the truth the less able you were to cope with it when it finally broke through all the barriers, like a dammed river, and carried away the careful structure of your life with it.

Our ancestral home is Blackwood Manor, an august if not overblown house in the grandest Greek Revival Style, replete with enormous and dizzying Corinthian columns, an immense structure on high ground.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

The general rule in nature is that live things are soft within and rigid without.

Because tribal foragers are highly mobile and can easily shift between different communities, authority is almost impossible to impose on the unwilling.

In D'Arco's words, "It was like a forest and all the trees around it were organized-crime guys.

There's a reason every book, even one that isn't very serious, is shaped like a suitcase

The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.

I define a factory as an organization that has figured it out, a place where people go to do what they're told and earn a paycheck.

a tax structure that heavily favors the very rich while damaging most other classes. The favored group can then translate the windfall into political power. They become "a political donor class" that raises millions for the Republican Party and throws a few crumbs and broad hints to the Democrats.

This conversation - Dez rapped her knuckles against the Formica table- is over. Be careful, Dez, Jimmy stated earnestly. And don't sleep with him the first night, Vinny warned. We know what a slut you can be. Dez turned to Sal. Do you have anything to add to this bullshit? Yeah. Sal looked down from the ceiling he'd been staring at. Based on the structure of this building, if we removed that pillar back there, we could take out this whole block. Dez sighed.

I did have a very restricted, regimented life. There was a kind of happiness there, a contentment, but it was a small happiness within very clear and delineated borders.

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

I think it goes hand in hand because if you discipline yourself on the floor, as you become an older player or a more seasoned individual, it adds structure in your life.

It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.

They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.

In your daytime life you have to be more strict.

There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.

Life is not free from its forms.

As we begin to become aware of the narrative patterns around which we structure our lives, we learn how to take charge, revise, refine, and even completely rewrite them.

Wanting to change only the British position at the top of the American social structure, John Adams feared that a "rage for innovation" would consume what was worthwhile about American culture.

It was made from bark slabs and wattle and daub