Gimmick Quotes

Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.

I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement.

Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..." And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it.

...mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less.

You’ve got to live right, too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.

I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires.

I just happen to comprehend the low standards of the majority of the music-buying public, and I don’t care how condescending that sounds, it’s true. They always go for the shiny gimmicks. Always.

It is fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead.What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new sciences,new talks, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks.

My clothes are made of monosodium glutamate and hexachlorophene. My food is made of polyester, rayon and lurex. My rug lotions contain vitamins. Do my vitamins feature cleaning agents? I hope so. My brain is gimmicked by a microprocessor the size of a quark, and costing ten pee and running the whole deal. I am made of — junk, I’m just junk.

The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.

Aesthetic and utilitarian considerations aside," I said, "Those mittens don't particularly make sense. Why would you want to hitchhike to the North Pole? Isn't the whole gimmick of Christmas that there's home delivery? You get up there, all you're going to find is a bunch of exhausted, grumpy elves. Assuming, of course, that you accept the mythical presence of a workshop up there, when we all know there isn't even a pole at the North Pole, and if global warming continues, there won't be any ice, either." "Why don't you just fuck off?" the woman replied. Then she took her mittens and got out of there.

As your heart goes, so goes your family! If your heart isn't right, no child raising system, rules, or gimmicks will ever work. As your heart goes, so goes your parenting!

The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different than wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown.

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.

Power and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they're obliged to use new gimmicks.

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.

Everything Paul knew boiled down to this one gimmick: try for what you want.

The hoodlum-occultist is “sociopathic” enough to, see through the conventional charade, the social mythology of his species. “They’re all sheep,” he thinks. “Marks. Suckers. Waiting to be fleeced.” He has enough contact with some more-or-less genuine occult tradition to know a few of the gimmicks by which “social consciousness,” normally conditioned consciousness, can be suspended. He is thus able to utilize mental brutality in place of the simple physical brutality of the ordinary hooligan. He is quite powerless against those who realize that he is actually a stupid liar. He is stupid because spending your life terrorizing and exploiting your inferiors is a dumb and boring existence for anyone with more than five billion brain cells. Can you imagine Beethoven ignoring the heavenly choirs his right lobe could hear just to pound on the wall and annoy the neighbors? Gödel pushing aside his sublime mathematics to go out and cheat at cards? Van Gogh deserting his easel to scrawl nasty caricatures in the men’s toilet? Mental evil is always the stupidest evil because the mind itself is not a weapon but a potential paradise. Every kind of malice is a stupidity, but occult malice is stupidest of all. To the extent that the mindwarper is not 100 percent charlatan through-and-through (and most of them are), to the extent that he has picked up some real occult lore somewhere, his use of it for malicious purposes is like using Shakespeare’s sonnets for toilet tissue or picking up a Picasso miniature to drive nails. Everybody who has advanced beyond the barbarian stage of evolution can see how pre-human such acts are, except the person doing them. Genuine occult initiation confers “the philosopher’s stone,” “the gold of the wise” and “the elixir of life,” all of which are metaphors for the capacity to greet life with the bravery and love and gusto that it deserves. By throwing this away to indulge in spite, malice and the small pleasure of bullying the credulous, the mindwarper proves himself a fool and a dolt. And the psychic terrorist, besides being a jerk, is always a liar and a fraud. Healing is easier (and more fun) than cursing, to begin with, and cursing usually backfires or misfires. The mindwarper doesn’t want you to know that. He wants you to think he’s omnipotent.

Do you still believe i public opinion? Well let me tell you public opinion is a gimmick thought up by the English and Americans, it's them who are shitting us up with this public opinion rot, of you'll excuse my language, we've never had their political system, we don't have their traditions, we don't even know what trade unions are, we're a southern people and we obey whoever shouts the loudest and gives the orders.

Accusing us of being a gimmick is a bit like accusing Jesus Christ of having ‘a bit of a messiah complex’. True, maybe, but when faced with the undeniable genius of what we put out, does that really still matter?

Changing mainstream media will be hard, but you can help create parallel options. More academics should blog, post videos, post audio, post lectures, offer articles, and more. You’ll enjoy it: I’ve had threats and blackmail, abuse, smears and formal complaints with forged documentation. But it’s worth it, for one simple reason: pulling bad science apart is the best teaching gimmick I know for explaining how good science works.

The more stuff people owned, the unhappier and more stressed they tended to be. Conversely, the less stuff people owned and the more they spent on experiences like travel or learning new skills, the happier and more content they were.

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author. It's a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

Jack Crawford heard the rhythm and syntax of his own speech in Graham’s voice. He had heard Graham do that before, with other people. Often in intense conversation Graham took on the other person’s speech patterns. At first, Crawford had thought he was doing it deliberately, that it was a gimmick to get the back-and-forth rhythm going. Later Crawford realized that Graham did it involuntarily, that sometimes he tried to stop and couldn’t.

Those who imagine that they can discover special gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace.

Death is orgasm is rebirth is death in orgasm is their unsanitary Venusian gimmick is the whole birth death cycle of action -- You got it?

The TV and film business is saturated with people who think they're writing something human when it's really a gimmick.

Right now I am thinking of writing another cookbook. All cookbooks have a gimmick, and mine will be that it contains recipes that I have invented and named after famous people. Some of them are: Brisket of Brynner (very lean meat) Carson Casserole (it's got everything on it) Barbecued Walters Marinated Maude Roasted Rhoda King King Curry (it will feed about eight thousand people) Fricassee of Fonzi Pickled Rickles Raquel Relish Leftovers à la Gabors

In an age when mass pleasures like television are becoming more feeble and homogeneous, the very act of discrimination becomes a form of protest. At a time when mass marketing of food produces a product so disgusting that it has to be wrapped in distracting gimmicks to be sold, the mere fact of paying attention to what you eat and drink and telling the truth about taste is a revolutionary act.

Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn’t know.

Elitism has become a dirty word, and it is a pity. Elitism is reprehensible only when it is snobbish and exclusive. The best sort of elitism tries to expand the élite by encouraging more and more people to join it . . . Science is inherently interesting, and the interest will shine through without the need for soundbites, gimmicks or dumbing down.

Stop thinking “Outside the box” and look what is actually in the box first. You jump around from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick without a clear plan or goal, hoping to reproduce someone else’s success without understanding all of the nuances and factors that went into that success. Further, people are so busy recreating the wheel that they have forgotten what the wheel looks like.

The body cannot be afraid of death. The movement that is created by society or culture is what does not want to come to an end. . . . What you are afraid of is not death. In fact, you don't want to be free from fear. . . . It is the fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead. What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new science, new talk, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. Fear is the very thing that you do not want to be free from. What you call “yourself” is fear. The “you” is born out of fear; it lives in fear, functions in fear and dies in fear.

But all he had up Robert's perfect sleeve was two rubbishy songs that were more gimmick than the white-hot fire of real music, the sort of music people would play over and over in their bedrooms at night, the sort that scrambled up your senses so wonderfully that you laughed and cried into your pillow at the same time, the sort of music that felt like you'd always known it even though you'd never heard it before, the songs you'd put on a mixtape and press into someone else's hand saying, This, this says how I feel better than I ever could.

Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws.

they were demons about cost. They enjoyed finding a bargain and were proud of getting good quality at a low price. They took great satisfaction in not paying extra for fancy packaging or marketing gimmicks. They were committed to keeping the weekly shopping bill as low as possible.

Hell, there're already too many psychologists; too many everythings. Too many engineers, too many chemists, too many doctors, too many dentists, too many sociologists. There aren't enough people who can actually do anything, really know how to make this world work. When you thing about it; when you look at the way it really is; God, we've got - well, let's say, there's 100 percent. Half of these are under eighteen or over sixty-five; that is not working. This leaves the middle fifty percent. Half of these are women; most are so busy having babies or taking care of kids, they're totally occupied. Some of them work, too, so let's say we're down to 30 percent. Ten percent are doctors or lawyers or sociologists or psychologists or dentists or businessmen or artists or writers, or schoolteachers, or priests, ministers, rabbis; none of there are actually producing anything, they're only servicing people. So now we're down to 20 percent. At least 2 or 3 percent are living on trusts or clipping coupons or are just rich. That leaves 17 percent. Seven percent of these are unemployed, mostly on purpose! So in the end we've got 10 percent producing all the food, constructing the houses, building and repairing all the roads, developing electricity, working in the mines, building cars, collecting garbage; all the dirty work, all the real work. Everybody's just looking for some gimmick so they don't have to actually do anything. And the worst part is, the ones who do the work get paid the least.

Credit and property and the 8-hour day are great friends of the Establishment. If you must buy things, pay cash, and only buy things of value--no trinkets, no gimmicks. Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free. And before you face the troops in the street, DECIDE and KNOW what you are going to replace them with and why. Romantic slogans won't do. Have a definite program, clearly worded, so if DO win you will have a suitable and decent form of government.

How about I tell you what I don't like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be - basically gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful - nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mashups a la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and cross breeding rarely results in anything satisfying... I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred and fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and - I imagine this goes without saying - vampires.

The modern world is also fascinated by innovation but scornful to tradition. Like the Athenians in Paul's day, many people do nothing but get involved in the latest fads (Acts 17:21). People stand in line to purchase the latest gimmicks, and no sooner do they learn how to use them than the manufacturers declare the models obsolete. Innovation! Progress!

Isn’t it evident we need more God and fewer gimmicks?

the trick with modern warfare was not to outgun the enemy, but carry weapons he could not gimmick.

gimmicks. A closer look at the online school movement illustrates how tax dollars and philanthropic donations are being used to fuel huge windfalls in the private sector.

In any case, the principles are simple: deny nothing; enjoy everything, but eat plants first and most. There's no gimmick, no dogma, no guilt, and no food police.

Pulling bad science apart is the best teaching gimmick I know for explaining how good science really works.

it’s hardly headline news that the corporate state and its media are using the latest gadget-com and gimmick-tech to dumb us down as steadily as if they were standing on a stool and pounding our brains with a frozen ham.

Her gaze follows my every move. I think she can feel something is weird but hasn’t put her finger on it yet. Maybe she’s seen my fangs and written them off as gimmick. I fucking love gimmicks. They’re so convenient to hide behind.

Our thoughts and desires are based in hope, but our behaviors are based in fear. This misalignment often causes a feeling of hopelessness and continues the cycle of feeding outdated ideologies and Guru genres offering gimmicks to anesthetize the pain.

a significant amount of Conventional Wisdom about healthy eating is marketing fodder that grossly distorts the fundamental truth that humans thrive on natural plant and animal foods or that relies on gimmicks to support the dogma of flawed, manipulated “research.

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

See, every hotel in Las Vegas has a gimmick, and the biggest gimmick of all is the Stratosphere Tower, which claims to have 113 floors, although I think they’re measuring floors in Las-Vegas-inches, which stretch and contract to fit whatever lie you’re trying to sell.

The innocents get slaughtered because they exist, I thought, there is nothing inside the happy killers to restrain them, no conscience or piety; for them the only things worthy of life were human, their own kind of human, framed in the proper clothes and gimmicks, laminated

Equally, I learned that most people don’t really know exactly what they want, or if they do it’s only from what they know, what is available or possible at the time. As Henry Ford said, famously, if he had asked American farmers what they wanted in terms of future transport, they would have answered ‘faster horses’. You need to show them new possibilities, new ideas and new products and explain these as lucidly as possible. Dyson advertising focuses on how our products are engineered and how they work, rather than on gimmicks and snappy sales lines.

Every Negro boy—in my situation during those years, at least—who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a “thing,” a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way. And it does not matter what the gimmick is.

A little inventor, that's it!...of a little gimmick!...just a little gimmick that's all!...I don't fling out messages to the world!...not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth!...I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas!...I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers!...

According to business and economics professor Paul Harvey, “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations.”1 If you believe that you’re special, and all you have to do is find your singular passion and turn it into a perfect job, that’s a recipe for disaster. The reality is that the world owes you nothing. You only become “special” by developing skills that are in demand, which takes focus, grit, and long-term work.

So it all moves in a pageant towards the ending, it's own ending. Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And there will be other summers, other band concerts, but never this one, never again, never as now. Next year I will not be the self of this year now. And that is why I laugh at the transient, the ephemeral; laugh, while clutching, holding, tenderly, like a fool his toy, cracked glass, water through fingers. For all the writing, for all the invention of engines to express & convey & capture life, it is the living of it that is the gimmick. It goes by, and whatevere dream you use to dope up the pains and hurts, it goes. Delude yourself about printed islands of permanence. You've only got so long to live. You're getting your dream. Things are working, blind forces, no personal spiritual beneficent ones except your own intelligence and the good will of a few other fools and fellow humans. So hit it while it's hot.

The evangelical Church today, with some exceptions, is not very inspiring in this regard. It is not being heroic. It is exhibiting too little of the moral splendor that Christ calls it to exhibit. Much of it, instead, is replete with tricks, gadgets, gimmicks, and marketing ploys as it shamelessly adapts itself to our emptied-out, blinded, postmodern world.

One of the biggest lies we´ve been sold is that following our passion is the key . Statistically, following your passion will lead to unemployment or underemployment

I miss the past,” Avo said before realizing that missing the past was what missing was.

That’s when I realized it was really very simple. Index investing beats 85 percent of actively managed mutual funds.

In choosing topics for research and departments to enlist in, a young scientist must beware of following fashion. It is one thing to fall into step with a great concerted movement of thought such as molecular genetics or cellular immunology, but quite another merely to fall in with prevailing fashion for, say, some new histochemical procedure or technical gimmick.

The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived. Right now, I have three and a half dates worth of material, all of which I pretend to deliver spontaneously. This is my strategy: If I can just coerce women into the last half of that fourth date, it’s anyone’s ball game. I’ve beaten the system; I’ve broken the code; I’ve slain the Minotaur. If we part ways on that fourth evening without some kind of conversational disaster, she probably digs me. Or at least she thinks she digs me, because who she digs is not really me. Sadly, our relationship will not last ninety-three minutes (like Annie Hall) or ninety-six minutes (like Manhattan). It will go on for days or weeks or months or years, and I’ve already used everything in my vault. Very soon, I will have nothing more to say, and we will be sitting across from each other at breakfast, completely devoid of banter; she will feel betrayed and foolish, and I will suddenly find myself actively trying to avoid spending time with a woman I didn’t deserve to be with in the first place.

How to Steal from Wall Street If you ever want to see a banker sweat, try this: walk into your bank, ask to see a salesperson, and ask to put your savings into index funds. It’s the funniest thing ever.

I worked for Marshall Field. That’s the World Book Company. And it was straight, up and down the line. No trade-ins, no deals, no dis- counts, no gimmicks, and we hired mostly teachers and preachers and housewives. So it was straight as an arrow. It was a great job. Pure selling. No wheeling and dealing. World Book, no deals. No trade-ins, no discounts, no gimmicks, nothing — cash. Cash. Money up front.

The inexperienced reader wants the essentially familiar combined with superficial novelty. Each story must have a slightly new setting or twist or "gimmick," though the fundamental features of the characters and situations remain the same. He evaluates a story not by its truth but by its twists and turns and surprises, by its suspense or its love interest. He wants his stories to be mainly pleasant. Evil, danger, and misery may appear in them, but not in such a way that they need be taken really seriously or are felt to be oppressive or permanent. He wants reading that slips easily and smoothly through his mind, requiring little mental effort. Most of all, he wants something that helps sustain his fantasy life, providing ready-made daydreams in which he overcomes his limitations, thwarts his enemies, and wins success or fame or the girl.

Social consciousness has become a gimmick to excuse reprehensible behavior. In fact, put “social” before any word, and it becomes “important” and “compassionate.” At its worst, social consciousness masks evil—it’s flimflam for the foul, a condemnation condom. Social consciousness won Al Sharpton invites to the White House, despite the cad’s ruining countless lives since his garish orgy of racial exploitation that began with the Tawana Brawley case in 1987.

7. Education is the only positive reward you need. If you don’t believe this you devalue your profession. I have seen all sorts of reward systems and positive feedback systems and empathy techniques. These do not lead to classroom control, but to manipulation. The idea that you need to motivate students with gimmicks and pep talks gives the message that education is not something desirable in and of itself but requires bribery. If students want to know what their reward for good behavior is, I tell them it is an education.

expansive sky of a “yes” that had endless room for grouchiness and irritation. Critical comments continued to arise, and with yes they continued to pass. When my mind suggested that I was using a gimmick that wouldn’t work for long, saying yes to the story allowed the thought to dissolve. I wasn’t resisting anything or holding on to anything. Moods and sensations and thoughts moved through the friendly skies of Radical Acceptance. I felt the inner freedom that comes from agreeing unconditionally to life. I was inviting Mara to tea. We bring alive the

Jacob," Rose persisted, "I still want to know what gave you the idea of singing like that. You weren't really drunk, were you?" "Jews don't get drunk." "You don't know everybody I do." "Anyway, it was this." He laid a finger across the bridge of his nose and swept it down to the tip. "Put me in a lineup with a Chinaman, a Choctow, and a Hottentot, and ask anybody to pick out the Jew and they'll get it right on the first try." "But--" "But nothing, Rose. It's the old Poe gimmick. Hide in plain sight. If a Jew tried to infiltrate that bunch of Nazis, what's the obvious thing to do? He'd head to the darkest corner he could find, he'd keep his head down and his trap shut and hope that nobody'd notice him. And do you think that would work? In a pig's ass - pardon my French, Rose - they'd catch him out in a minute. So I stood up and acted drunk and sang Nazi songs. No Jew would do that; so they just figured I was an unlucky Aryan who managed to pick up a bad gene from a wandering ancestor. So maybe this drunk wasn't quite one hundred percent pure Aryan, but he was obviously as good Nazi, so let him be. At least for now.

There are parts of every passion that, when turned into a full-time job, suck. I love writing, but that doesn’t mean I love rewriting chapters over and over again, or getting rejection letters from agents, or poring over the dense legalese of a publishing contract until my eyes bleed.

I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that way, and polish me off that way. And yet, of course, at the same time, I was being spat on and defined and described and limited, and could have been polished off with no effort whatever. Every Negro boy - in my situation during those years, at least - who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a "thing," a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way. And it does not matter what that gimmick is.

How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.

in order to be truly creative, constraints are necessary. If you’ve ever tried to write a novel, you know what I mean. Staring at a blank computer screen feels debilitating. With infinite directions to pursue, you end up paralyzed. But by imposing some constraints—like learning how to structure your paragraphs, build a story arc, and write a scene, or doing a writing exercise—you start to see a path forward.

Gimmicks too often fail. Saying something of genuine importance and interest to the recipient usually succeeds. You say it with a headline. Yes, I am well aware that advertising has headlines and letters generally do not. However, successful sales letters do. It can go above the salutation or between the salutation and the body copy. It can be typeset in big, bold type while the rest of the letter has a typewritten look. Or it can be put in a “Johnson box,” a device presumably named after an inventor named Johnson, that looks like the one in the letter in Exhibit #8. What your headline says and how it says it are absolutely critical. You might compare it to the door-to-door salesperson wedging a foot in the door, buying just enough time to deliver one or two sentences that will melt resistance, create interest, and elevate his or her status from annoying pest to welcome guest; you've got just about the same length of time, the same opportunity. Exhibit #8 Johnson Box September 12, 2005 Mr. Horace Buyer President ACME Co. 123 Business Street City, State, Zip Dear Mr. Buyer: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Your headline goes here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Body copy begins here and continues normal letter format.

Dr. Syngmann: But someone must have made it all. Don't you think so, John? Pastor Jón: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and so on, said the late pastor Lens. Dr. Syngmann: Listen, John, how is it possible to love God? And what reason is there for doing so? To love, is that not the prelude to sleeping together, something connected with the genitals, at its best a marital tragedy among apes? It would be ridiculous. People are fond of their children, all right, but if someone said he was fond of God, wouldn't that be blasphemy? Pastor Jón once again utters that strange word 'it' and says: I accept it. Dr. Syngmann: What do you mean when you say you accept God? Did you consent to his creating the world? Do you think the world as good as all that, or something? This world! Or are you all that pleased with yourself? Pastor Jón: Have you noticed that the ewe that was bleating outside the window is now quiet? She has found her lamb. And I believe that the calf here in the homefield will pull through. Dr. Syngmann: I know as well as you do, John, that animals are perfect within their limits and that man is the lowest rung in the reverse-evolution of earthly life: one need only compare the pictures of an emperor and a dog to see that, or a farmer and the horse he rides. But I for my part refuse to accept it. Pastor Jón Prímus: To refuse to accept it - what is meant by that? Suicide or something? Dr. Syngmann: At this moment, when the alignment with a higher humanity is at hand, a chapter is at last beginning that can be taken seriously in the history of the earth. Epagogics provide the arguments to prove to the Creator that life is an entirely meaningless gimmick unless it is eternal. Pastor Jón: Who is to bell the cat? Dr. Syngmann: As regards epagogics, it is pleading a completely logical case. In six volumes I have proved my thesis with incontrovertible arguments; even juridically. But obviously it isn't enough to use cold reasoning. I take the liberty of appealing to this gifted Maker's honour. I ask Him - how could it ever occur to you to hand over the earth to demons? The only ideal over which demons can unite is to have a war. Why did you permit the demons of the earth to profess their love to you in services and prayers as if you were their God? Will you let honest men call you demiurge, you, the Creator of the world? Whose defeat is it, now that the demons of the earth have acquired a machine to wipe out all life? Whose defeat is it if you let life on earth die on your hands? Can the Maker of the heavens stoop so low as to let German philosophers give Him orders what to do? And finally - I am a creature you have created. And that's why I am here, just like you. Who has given you the right to wipe me out? Is justice ridiculous in your eyes? Cards on the table! (He mumbles to himself.) You are at least under an obligation to resurrect me!

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.

Some of these bots are already arriving in 2021 in more primitive forms. Recently, when I was in quarantine at home in Beijing, all of my e-commerce packages and food were delivered by a robot in my apartment complex. The package would be placed on a sturdy, wheeled creature resembling R2-D2. It could wirelessly summon the elevator, navigate autonomously to my door, and then call my phone to announce its arrival, so I could take the package, after which it would return to reception. Fully autonomous door-to-door delivery vans are also being tested in Silicon Valley. By 2041, end-to-end delivery should be pervasive, with autonomous forklifts moving items in the warehouse, drones and autonomous vehicles delivering the boxes to the apartment complex, and the R2-D2 bot delivering the package to each home. Similarly, some restaurants now use robotic waiters to reduce human contact. These are not humanoid robots, but autonomous trays-on-wheels that deliver your order to your table. Robot servers today are both gimmicks and safety measures, but tomorrow they may be a normal part of table service for many restaurants, apart from the highest-end establishments or places that cater to tourists, where the human service is integral to the restaurant’s charm. Robots can be used in hotels (to clean and to deliver laundry, suitcases, and room service), offices (as receptionists, guards, and cleaning staff), stores (to clean floors and organize shelves), and information outlets (to answer questions and give directions at airports, hotels, and offices). In-home robots will go beyond the Roomba. Robots can wash dishes (not like a dishwasher, but as an autonomous machine in which you can pile all the greasy pots, utensils, and plates without removing leftover food, with all of them emerging cleaned, disinfected, dried, and organized). Robots can cook—not like a humanoid chef, but like an automated food processor connected to a self-cooking pot. Ingredients go in and the cooked dish comes out. All of these technology components exist now—and will be fine-tuned and integrated in the decade to come. So be patient. Wait for robotics to be perfected and for costs to go down. The commercial and subsequently personal applications will follow. By 2041, it’s not far-fetched to say that you may be living a lot more like the Jetsons!

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.

It is important for Americans to recognize that, despite all of the fancy gimmicks and perceived power of modern medicine, the largest explosion of preventable, chronic diseases ever in the history of mankind has occurred as a direct result of modern medicine and scientific reductionism. Modern medicine is not an antidote for the incredible harms caused by the modern food industry, but it is an effective distraction.

These mega-churches are springing up all over the country—especially in the suburbs of large cities. And they all follow the same formula: A charismatic, self-anointed pastor starts a church by holding services in a home, then in a school. He targets the young professionals, who make good salaries—although the poorer folks are welcome too, as long as they’re willing to pay their fair share. When there are enough members, the pastor proposes buying land, then buildings, then more buildings, asking the people to give sacrificially to do God’s work. The pastor uses outrageous gimmicks in the worship services to create a massive word-of-mouth campaign for the church. Everybody’s excited about going to the big show on Sundays. For the children and youth, church is like going to a theme park. And what kid wouldn’t want to do that? A local TV ministry is added. Then it goes national. Then global. Services are streamed live to the internet. A satellite campus is opened, then another, and so on. Ministries are established in foreign countries. But whose church is it? The pastor’s. Whose ministry is it? The pastor’s. What is everything built on? The pastor. It is his church. His ministry. His empire. -- Hal, the mega-church blogger

More important than any gimmick you introduce is a change in attitude. People must learn that it’s okay sometimes not to answer their phones, and they must learn that their time–not just the quantity but its quality–is important.

I have always believed that a trademark is the life of an enterprise and that it must be protected boldly. A trademark and a company name are not just clever gimmicks-they carry responsibility and guarantee the quality of the product. If someone tries to get a free ride on the reputation and the ability of another who has worked to build up public trust, it is nothing short of thievery. We were not flattered by this theft of our name.

His clever wife developed an extraordinary gimmick. She hooked callers

When you’re living for more than mere marital happiness, you have staying power. Rather than looking for a gimmick, you’re willing to embark on a journey that lasts a lifetime but is lived one day at a time.

This gimmick makes it possible for citizens to raise and decide issues directly. They won’t have to wait for the Council to verbalize a measure. Any citizen can transmit his will with one of these, make his needs register on a central control that automatically responds. When a large enough segment of the population wants a certain thing done, these little gadgets set up an active field that touches all the others. An issue won’t have to go through a formal Council. The citizens can express their will long before any bunch of gray-haired old men could get around to it.

Ailes, who was the show’s executive producer, understood the revolutionary power of the medium in ways that the politician did not. “It’s a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected,” Nixon told Ailes off-camera. “Television is not a gimmick,” Ailes shot back, “and if you think it is, you’ll lose again.

Dear all, Hello to everyone, now I am seated in ergonomic chair in my office, this blog is generally written for every single guy who has complaint against his divine, but has anyone ponder on it, why a person faces crisis in his life? some guys always blame on god for their pathetic condition, in reality they are behind their chaos, as far as I am concerned improper thinking and poor decision making downgrade a person to marsh, especially we can see its example in investment , number of guys spend their money but some of them succumb loss and pour their frustration on god or mentor, I would love to share it with everyone that lump some investment and unaware about ongoing market trends are two basic reasons that blocks the profit of a guy, so I have personal rede to every guy that before investment everyone should go through previous record of market and mull over their strategy of capital investment, if you have any problem for making your investment plan or totally perplexed to spend your hard earn, you should consult with investment consultant, before opting your mentor you should follow your brain not marketing gimmick, because marketing gimmick only tempts the crowd and after making fool to their target audience they skedaddle from market, so friends beware from show off, always use your brain. If you have any problem regarding to your investment strategy, feel free to log on forexnx.com It will your favor to give me chance to serve you in this dog eats dog market. Your satisfaction is our success Warm regards Pooja singh

Evangelical zeal also permeated into the youth culture, as seen in the explosion of youth-oriented organizations like Young Life (1941), Youth for Christ (1946), Fellowship of Christian Athletes (1954), and Student Venture (1966). In response to the immediate popularity of these organizations and the supportive desire to see young people reached with the gospel, churches began their own version of “youth ministry.” Youth ministry quickly became a church-norm, especially in the United States, even developing into its own culture with rock bands, skits, and inspirational talks by the newly-formed category—the Youth Pastor. Some today are calling for this culture of youth ministry to give up their gimmicks and return to a biblical model of means of grace ministry.

creativity is not a gimmick, but a lifestyle.

The Salva Kiir government along with the so called SPLA have used accounting gimmicks and competing government analyses to deceive the citizens into believing that 1 + 1 = 6. If our leaders cannot agree on the numbers, if facts are fictional, how can they possibly have a substantive debate on peace in South Sudan and solutions?

I have always believed that a trademark is the life of an enterprise and that it must be protected boldly. A trademark and a company name are not just clever gimmicks-they carry responsibility and guarantee the quality of the product. If someone tries to get a free ride on the reputation and the ability of another who has worked to build up public trust, it is nothing short of thievery. We were not flattered by this theft of our name.

By combining applied motivational speeches and creative musical arrangement with the latest and best gimmicks of technology, we listen to the promise that we can and will feel good by finding God (and find God by feeling good). We consume these carefully manufactured divine experiences like any other product, expecting them to be over on the hour so that we still have plenty of time to trot back to our lives of buying, selling, and trying to feel even more good in all the ways we possibly can.

I yearn for a culture of evangelism that never trades confidence in the gospel for confidence in techniques, personalities, or entertainment gimmicks.

Eliminate wheat in all its myriad forms and pounds melt away, often as much as a pound a day. No gimmicks, no subscription meals, no special formulas, no “meal replacement” drinks or “cleansing” regimens required.

At its zenith Sears accounted for more than 2 percent of all retail sales in the United States. It pioneered several innovations critical to the success of today’s most admired retailers: for example, supply chain management, store brands, catalogue retailing, and credit card sales. The esteem in which Sears’ management was held shows in this 1964 excerpt from Fortune: “How did Sears do it? In a way, the most arresting aspect of its story is that there was no gimmick. Sears opened no big bag of tricks, shot off no skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though everybody in its organization simply did the right thing, easily and naturally. And their cumulative effect was to create an extraordinary powerhouse of a company.

Instead of searching for weight-loss gimmicks and tricks, adopt a resolution to be healthy. Focusing on your health, not on your weight, will eventually result in long-term weight loss. Eating a healthy diet, one that is rich in an assortment of natural plant fibers, will help you crave less and feel satisfied without overeating. Other diet plans fail because they cater to modern American tastes, which include too many processed foods and animal products to be healthy. Stop measuring portions and trying to follow complicated formulas. Instead, eat as many vegetables, beans, and fresh fruits as possible, and less of everything else. Don’t succumb to those other plans, which are an insult to your body as well as your intelligence.

If we would only cling to Him and submit to the Spirit of Christ as much as we did our erroneous traditions, we might find ourselves walking in the Spirit, moment by moment, in the Spirit’s power with the reality of the truth that the cross of Jesus Christ, according to God’s holy Word, is all that matters in the universe. Therefore, when we preach the cross, express God’s truth, read God’s Word, teach our children, and so forth, we don’t need to draw pictures, paint portraits, show videos, graphically illustrate, creatively demonstrate, or use ingenious and appealing tricks, methods, or gimmicks for it to be understood by those that hear. When we operate in such a way, by the power of God’s Spirit, it’s called... yeah, that’s right— faith.

Gimmicks? Here we go again. I'm tired of people sayin' we rely on gimmicks. What is this? The world is nothin' but a big gimmick isn't it? Wars, napalm bombs and all that. People being burned-up on TV...Yes, we do.