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Reference Quotes

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Reference Quotes

“You know that old movie you made me watch, where the poor kid was standing outside with his nose pressed to the glass? That's how I felt.' / 'That old movie' he’s referring to is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie is watching all the kids go hog wild at the candy store but he can’t go inside because he doesn’t have any money.”

“There is no shortcut for hard work that leads to effectiveness. You must stay disciplined because most of the work is behind the scenes.”

“The symptoms of a writer who hasn’t found their way clear of the needs of Self yet are easy to spot. I should say the symptoms are easy for everyone else to spot, that is, and not so easy for the writer themself to see. You’ll see a writer who does not trust the characters to speak and move on their own, but has to puppeteer them; a writer who does not trust the reader to understand what’s written. One who must insert parentheticals in various forms to explain the work to the reader; flashbacks to explain; big black blocks of text on the page to explain; question-and-answer dialog between characters who aren’t in a courtroom; walk-and-talk characters with their mouths full of dialog of what the story is about; too many stage directions that make the script read like a novel…”

“God gave us ground we created a city, God gave us time we need to create a future.”

“The height of your success will be measured with reference to the depth from which you started.”

“You write poetry?" Klaus asked. He had read a lot about poets but had never met one. "Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine." "Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!”

“Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was still too far to help but close enough to see. "Genghis has an eye tattoo, like Count Olaf! In fact, I think he IS Count Olaf!" "Of course he is!" Violet cried, holding up the unraveled turban. "Merd!" Sunny shrieked, holding up a tiny piece of shoelace. She meant something like "That's what we've been trying to tell you.”

“When you’re trying to communicate a big, audacious concept, it’s helpful to remember that where data falls short, a story might close the gap, and where story alone is not persuasive enough, data can make up the difference.”

“The majestic whale travels the seven seas piping its unique song in the hopes of finding its tribe. The other whales in the sea can hear the solitary whale. But the song to them is foreign and unfamiliar. They’re not resonating on the same frequencies and so, it seems, there can be no reciprocity. The creature carries on, searching high and low for a sign of recognition and response.”

“Communicators begin with generous intent and then surrender the work to the audience to do with as they will, including identifying and resonating with the work in their own unique ways.”

“Our imagination tells us that being as connected as we are—the ease of travel, technological advances and pooled intelligence—should have produced better results for more people than we’re now seeing.”

“Those who are resonating the most with your work, who recognize themselves in your vision, will naturally crave language that speaks to that you-and-me kind of 'we.' They’ll want to identify with your ideas personally and keep talking about them.”

“While someone might attempt a feeble carbon copy of those ideas you’ve spent years developing, they can never match the undeniably distinctive aspect of your work. Especially if it resonates across multiple platforms and in multiple formats.”

“Because we live in a highly uncertain world, life frequently demands that we adjust to a new normal and a new reality, different from our old normal and the old reality of yesterday. This often involves regaining our balance in the face of a diagnosis, a disability, a death in the family, a divorce or some other drastic change in our circumstances.”

“We sing our way forward, on frequencies only we can, depending on the chosen space, the chosen medium, the idea we’re trying to spread and the promises we’re making to the audience we’re seeking to serve.”

“Our ideas are like living entities, swimming in an ocean of other ideas. Every idea is being broadcast on a different frequency and has varying levels of resonance with those who respond to that frequency.”

“Irresolution, it might be said, is a hallmark of our lives. That so much of what happens is beyond our direct knowledge or control, and that there is no way of knowing our own story’s ending (or even duration) might explain why we crave the complication-resolution pattern in story.”

“An idea packaged up in nonfiction is a completely different animal to an idea packaged up in fiction. And while the lines blur in that hybrid creature called narrative nonfiction, we should be under no illusions that they’re the same animal.”

“There are things we can say in nonfiction that cannot be said outright in fiction. And there are truths that can be conveyed in fiction that the constraints of nonfiction would never allow.”

“One of the central problems of a time in which there are many competing voices on the airwaves, in the media and online, is finding a way to get in sync, on some semblance of the same wavelength as others who share the same values, questions and goals.”

“If our transmission is too garbled due to an unwittingly arrogant tone, the idea we broadcast isn’t necessarily the idea that will be received in the minds and hearts of the hearers.”

“New wisdom is the wisdom that whispers to us to pursue detachment. It is the wisdom that, steady as breath work, releases us from our monkey-mind grip on exactly how life needs to look and sound. We don’t even have to obsess about how long an idea will be relevant, trusting the universe that when the idea’s time has expired an even more useful one will appear to replace it.”

“Sending resonant signals is also different from merely adding to a cultural echo chamber. That’s because of the unique flavor of your own authority and experience, origins and obstacles. All the why’s you’ve addressed in terms of author, audience, topic and timing. Delineated in these ways, your big, generous idea, located at the edges of the possible, becomes a complementary addition to a rich and harmonic symphony. Complementary yet undeniably distinctive.”

“As an audience it seems we’re as good as saying, “I’ll pay attention to your idea if you… * are already being taken seriously in some way * have found your place (professionally or personally) * believe strongly in something relevant to your idea * are connecting (with ideas, with people) in meaningful ways * are finding ways to be useful in the world * are finding ways to achieve more of what you value * have developed mastery and control * are participating in interesting things * and are radiating love and acceptance for self and others.” Your chosen audience will have three or four things on that list they value most in their own lives. And because they do value those things so highly, they’ll be looking for those signals from you.”

“The biggest challenge for communicators today is found in the story of the loneliest whale in the world. This whale—nicknamed Blue 52 by scientists in the early nineties—was discovered traversing the seas and singing on a unique frequency. Year after year, its migration pathway took it across several thousand miles but, no matter how many signals it sent out, those signals failed to evoke a response from any of its own kind.”

“Big ideas are often big precisely because they defy categorization. But blame it on our human tendency to want some kind of peg to hang our hat on. So before you blow up the category, what your editors, copywriters and marketing department might want to know is, what’s the niche?”