“
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about a thousand words from a rambler vs. 500 words from Mark Twain? He could say the same thing quicker and with more force than almost any other writer. One thousand words from Ginsberg are not even worth one from Wilde. It’s wild to declare the equivalency of any picture with any army of 1,000 words. Words from a writer like Wordsworth make you appreciate what words are worth.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks (This isn't really my best book))
“
People sometimes say: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' That's true. But language is never far away. To talk about the picture, you may need a thousand words.
”
”
David Crystal (A Little Book of Language)
“
One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words
”
”
William Saroyan
“
They say a picture tells a thousand words, but photographs reveal only a small part of the real story about a person.
”
”
Brownell Landrum (Repercussions: DUET stories Volume IV - Adult Version)
“
They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but with me it always ends up being well over a hundred thousand.
”
”
Luke Taylor
“
I know they say that a picture's worth a thousand words, but it's amazing how often those words tell the wrong story.
”
”
Jacqueline E. Smith (Worldwide (Boy Band #3))
“
The kiss is the greatest of gifts, a miracle, uniquely human. A kiss beneath the mistletoe. A kiss after midnight. A kiss before dying. The devil's kiss. As a picture tells a thousand words, so a kiss says everything that's important. I am told prostitutes never kiss their clients. It is too personal, too human. We kiss to say I love you. We kiss the rings of the self-important. The feet of conquerors. The rich dark earth when we reach the promised land. We kiss our hands and wave as loved ones begin a journey. We kiss strangers before dawn in the first hours of a New Year because our wintry lips are incomplete until they are oiled by a kiss.
”
”
Chloe Thurlow (The Secret Life of Girls)
“
If it is true that a picture paints a thousand words, then there was a Roman centurion who got a dictionary full. All he did was see Jesus suffer. He never heard him preach or saw him heal or followed him through the crowds. He never witnessed him still the wind; he only witnessed the way he died. But that was all it took to cause this weather-worn soldier to take a giant step in faith. “Surely this was a righteous man.”1 That says a lot, doesn’t it? It says the rubber of faith meets the road of reality under hardship. It says the trueness of one’s belief is revealed in pain. Genuineness and character are unveiled in misfortune. Faith is at its best, not in three-piece suits on Sunday mornings or at V.B.S. on summer days, but at hospital bedsides, cancer wards, and cemeteries. Maybe that’s what moved this old, crusty soldier. Serenity in suffering is a stirring testimony. Anybody can preach a sermon on a mount surrounded by daisies. But only one with a gut full of faith can live a sermon on a mountain of pain.
”
”
Max Lucado (No Wonder They Call Him the Savior: Discover Hope in the Unlikeliest Place (The Bestseller Collection Book 4))
“
People say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a mighty quotation is worth more than a thousand pictures.
”
”
Jakub Marian (333 Wittiest Quotable Quotes)
“
A picture may say a thousand words, but a word can say what only a word can say.
”
”
Vishesh Sharma (The Lost Temple)
“
Kodak commercials say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the one they showed of Rodney ain’t worth more than three or four. Boy. Black.
”
”
Tayari Jones (Leaving Atlanta)
“
Beyond that, I learned about visual adaptation - what a picture can say, and what it can't. A picture's worth a thousand words, but its vocabulary is limited. A picture's no sesquipedalian.
”
”
Brent Weeks (The Way of Shadows: The Graphic Novel (First Chapter Free Preview) (The Night Angel Trilogy))
“
Create engaging video content.” If a picture can tell a thousand words, image how many words a video can convey. To say that video should be an important piece of your content pie would be an understatement for most businesses.
”
”
Jeremy Goldman (Going Social: Excite Customers, Generate Buzz, and Energize Your Brand with the Power of Social Media)
“
Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut ... We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn’t the opposite equally true?
”
”
Sol Luckman (Beginner's Luke (Beginner's Luke, #1))
“
haven’t seen you lose your temper once. I’ve seen you lose it three times tonight alone.” Romeo flashed him a glare. “If you have something to say, say it, Sun.” Zach dusted his cashmere-clad shoulder. “A picture’s worth a thousand words, but your face only says one—pussy-whipped.
”
”
Parker S. Huntington (My Dark Romeo (Dark Prince Road, #1))
“
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over.
The door was locked.
“I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!”
Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.
“Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back.
“You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice.
“Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…”
“I know, I believe you.”
At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket.
“Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger.
Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?”
I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself.
“You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—”
I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!”
“You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.”
“No!” I shrieked. “No!”
He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door.
I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them.
But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room.
“—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1))
“
The measuring rod, the unit of information, is something called a bit (for binary digit). It is an answer - either yes or no- to an unambiguous question...
The information content of the human brain expressed in bits is probably comparable to the total number of connections among the neurons- about a hundred trillion, 10^14 bits. If written out in English, say, that information would fill some twenty million volumes, as many as in the world's largest libraries. The equivalent of twenty million books is inside the heads of every one of us...
When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented them. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we needed to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library...
The great libraries of the world contain millions of volumes, the equivalent of about 10^14 bits of information in words, and perhaps 10^15 bits in pictures. This is ten thousand times more than in our brains. If I finish a book a week, I will only read a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read...
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries. p224-233
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
Love Song For Someone Else"
your shadow only really knows
the things they say just to get you home
cause i spend all my time waiting in line for you
a picture tells a thousand words
none of which ive ever heard
cause i spend all my time waiting in line for you
every seed, ive ever dreamed
the flowers dont wanna grow
cause i spend all my time waiting in line for you
”
”
Gorgeous Bully
“
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a word is worth a million pictures. A billion. As many as there are people who know the word. Each has their own picture, their own meaning of it, in their heads. It's theirs. It's unique. And yet they share it with everyone else. And every time they use a word, a single word, they contribute to the creation of the soul of us all.
”
”
Richard Tillotson (Acts of God While on Vacation)
“
The Book Lover:-
See how I have come up in the World, because of my books.
I pull the covers agape, pages release their cargo and words fly like birds each with its own song.
Listen, and vowels will breathe like flutes in your head,
Consonants tick-tack like woodpeckers, and sibilants, sly as asps, bite the plosives that pop from our pressed lips.
A picture worth a thousand words?
You paint a score of trees, dark needled, stippled and stroked across your canvas:
My book say ‘’forrest’’ (Feel that Pine green touch)
You wash your paper with azures and turquoise, set ship after ship, sails wind-pregnant,
As far as the daubed horizon: my books say ‘’armada’’. (Smell that sea-green scent)
Art’s shape is their noun, its colour their objective,
Its tone their adverb; my books match the grammar of landscapes.
This book may say ‘Socrates’ secrets,
Freud’s autopsy of actions or Heaney’s verses;
Every idea dreamed by man caught, black stamped for all time, within its cardboard confines.
Here the past speaks to us, as the future will, in the language of our senses.
Step up book by book-
In time, you will reach the stars.
”
”
Catriona Malan
“
Dolphins... Yeah, dolphins... A lot of people like dogs, cats, and - for some reason I've never been able to fathim - even snakes and toads. But dolphins? Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY loves bloody dolphins. Don't they? Goes way back, to the ancient Greeks, when shipwrecked sailors would wash up on beaches yammering out crazy stories of how they was staring down a watery grave, when out of nowhere, flipper shows up and pushes them safely back to the shore. Heartarming - and say what you will about aquatic mammal public relations, but that was one ispired move, because here we are two thousand years later and everybody still loves them bloody dolphins. What you don't hear are the other stories, the ones where flipper's watching poor Artemides doggy paddling away and inhaling the warm, salty waters of the Adriatic... and flipper things, "Yeah, sure I could save him, but sod that for a can of sardines" and instead of pushing Artemides back to shore, flipper pushes the poor sod out to sea... in the immortal words of Sir Johnny of the Cash, "Just to watch him die..." See, moral is, if you're gonna be a bastard, be like a dolphin - think big picture, protect your image and above all, leave no trace. Because in the bloodshot, bleary eyes of the world, once you're a bastard, you're always a bastard.
”
”
Simon Oliver (The Hellblazer #3)
“
I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
They’re in southern France. Oldest paintings ever found there. We’re talking like thirty thousand years old. Scenes typical of the Paleolithic—horses, cattle, mammoths, that kind of thing. No pictures of humans but one depiction of a vagina, for what that’s worth. The really interesting thing is what happened when they carbon-dated the place. They found pictures in the same room painted six thousand years apart. They looked identical.”
“Okay. So?”
“So think about that. For six thousand years there was no progress and no evidence of any impulse to change anything. People were fine with the way things were. In other words, this is not a people experiencing spiritual desolation. You and I need new diversions nightly. These people didn’t change a thing for sixty centuries. This is not a people tired of their snack routine.”
The drumming outside escalates for a moment and then fades “back into a kind of ominous tolling.
“Melancholy,” Periwinkle says, “had to be invented. Civilization had this unintended side effect, which is melancholy. Tedium. Routine. Gloom. And when those things were birthed, so were people like me, to attend to them. So no, it’s not patriotism. It’s evolution.
”
”
Nathan Hill (The Nix)
“
[All] modern chatbots are actually trained simply to predict the next word in a sequence of words. They generate text by repeatedly producing one word at a time. For technical reasons, they generate a “token” at a time, tokens being chunks of words that are shorter than words but longer than individual letters. They string these tokens together to generate text.
When a chatbot begins to respond to you, it has no coherent picture of the overall response it’s about to produce. It instead performs an absurdly large number of calculations to determine what the first word in the response should be. After it has output—say, a hundred words—it decides what word would make the most sense given your prompt together with the first hundred words that it has generated so far.
This is, of course, a way of producing text that’s utterly unlike human speech. Even when we understand perfectly well how and why a chatbot works, it can remain mind-boggling that it works at all.
Again, we cannot stress enough how computationally expensive all this is. To generate a single token—part of a word—ChatGPT has to perform roughly a trillion arithmetic operations. If you asked it to generate a poem that ended up having about a thousand tokens (i.e., a few hundred words), it would have required about a quadrillion calculations—a million billion.
”
”
Arvind Narayanan (AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference)
“
A moment ago, when he entered this human aviary, the pictures, modestly enclosed in four wooden mouldings, remained flat and silent before him; in order to wrest their secret from them, he must believe in them. He wanted to believe in them. He stood in front of one of the canvases. Between the two walls, drenched in sunlight, a single hoop rolled towards that point where the parallels meet in infinity. Little by little, as he looked at it, the picture came alive. What it was saying he could not be translated into words; it was said in painting and no other language could have expressed its meaning; but it spoke. He advanced a few paces. Under his attentive gaze, all the pictures came alive; they awoke memories more ancient than the beginning of the world; they evoked the unpredictable face of the earth far beyond the revolutions to come; they exposed the secrets of a jagged coastline, of a dessert sprinkled with shells, as they remained solitary within themselves, protected from any conscience. Statues without faces, men turned to pillars of salt, landscapes scorched by the flames of death, oceans frozen into immobility of the absolute instant: these were the thousand shapes of absence. And while he looked at this universe devoid of onlookers, it seemed as if he were absent from himself, and that he remained, outside his own personal history, in an empty white eternity. And yet that dream of purity and absence only existed because I was there to lend it the strength of my life.
”
”
Simone de Beauvoir
“
Similarly, the brains of mice that have learned many tasks are slightly different from the brains of other mice that have not learned these tasks. It is not so much that the number of neurons has changed, but rather that the nature of the neural connections has been altered by the learning process. In other words, learning actually changes the structure of the brain. This raises the old adage “practice makes perfect.” Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald Hebb discovered an important fact about the wiring of the brain: the more we exercise certain skills, the more certain pathways in our brains become reinforced, so the task becomes easier. Unlike a digital computer, which is just as dumb today as it was yesterday, the brain is a learning machine with the ability to rewire its neural pathways every time it learns something. This is a fundamental difference between a digital computer and the brain. This lesson applies not only to London taxicab drivers, but also to accomplished concert musicians as well. According to psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues, who studied master violinists at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music, top concert violinists could easily rack up ten thousand hours of grueling practice by the time they were twenty years old, practicing more than thirty hours per week. By contrast, he found that students who were merely exceptional studied only eight thousand hours or fewer, and future music teachers practiced only a total of four thousand hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin says, “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.… In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.” Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the book Outliers, calls this the “10,000-hour rule.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
“
To be cut off from family for years -- to be too far away for regular visits. To watch so many of your closest relationships fray and then dissolve. To see your children grow up through family pictures. To be hungry for days at a time because the food you eat is never enough, and there is nothing you can do about it. To be isolated. To be in a place with thousands of men but to somehow feel alone. This is what it means to be socially dead. To be subected to violence and humiliation. To be shackled, one to another, during daily routines, your ability to work and provide for yourself taken away. To move in a coffle down long hallways like animals for 'feeding time' of 'meds.' To be marched away from your lover and your children every time visitation ends. To be cut off from the human community or to have no community at all -- at least, no community that might be valued by members of a free society. To have few benefits and fewer protections. To become a figure who walks the yard or haunts the neighborhood so many years after your release, unable to find work or secure a home, unable to participate in the politics of the city in the ways most people find meaningful. To have no say over where or how often you connect with people you love. To be made a 'nonperson,' in the words of sociologist Orlando Patterson, who gave us the term 'social death.' To be at once part of the wider world, through labor or punishment or as a social problem of national concern, yet to be kept just outside of it.
”
”
Reuben Jonathan Miller (Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration)
“
I’m here for you. We need to talk about this, Jay.” “We really, really don’t. You know what they say, right? A picture is worth a thousand words.
”
”
Jade Church (Get Even (Sun City #1))
“
Daniel Pink says, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.”120 He makes this assertion because word pictures engage both hemispheres of our brains and bring us to greater levels of understanding and involvement
”
”
John C. Maxwell (The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message)
“
A picture’s worth a thousand words, but your face only says one—pussy-whipped.
”
”
Parker S. Huntington (My Dark Romeo (Dark Prince Road, #1))
“
A picture can say a thousand words, but a sentence can paint a thousand pictures...
”
”
J. Buchanan
“
To begin, look over the chapters by glancing at the content on the pages. Set aside about 30 minutes every four to five hours or three times a day and look at the bold words, pictures, and highlighted sentences. Nursing exams generally test on multiple chapters so it is important you start this process as soon as you can. Ideally, begin immediately after you have taken your last exam so you can get a head start on new material. This step helps you recognize the words and familiarizes you with the content. After several times of looking at a word read the definition. As you read the definition notice how you are able to focus on what the word means. Doing this simple step can eliminate reading without understanding. We must see a word several times before our brain flags it as important. That is why after the third or fourth time you look over information you finally say to yourself, “Okay, I have heard and seen this several times and I must know more about it!” Once you have reached that point you will find yourself directing all of your attention to the word’s definition. And that motivation is because you have seen it so many times. There is still a problem though, because in nursing school there are thousands upon thousands of words. By just reading you rely on vision to get you through and retain all of this knowledge. Although this is possible, and has probably worked in the past, this is not an ideal way to study for nursing classes. After you look at the words and read the definitions a few times, go back and underline each word and definition. This helps you engage the body by adding movement. Then say the words and definitions out loud. Doing so engages the three senses of sight, touch, and sound. You are also using all three learning styles, which are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. No matter what type of learner you are predominately, if you constantly use all three styles it helps to lock the information into your brain. I have also noticed that these steps train you to have a photographic memory. This is especially important when there is a long chart you need to memorize. For example, in pediatric nursing you need to know a very extensive growth and development chart, and if you do not have kids yet it can be extremely foreign. At first, incorporating this new study method may be challenging. But once you start using it and see your exam results rise, you will never turn back. After
”
”
Caroline Porter Thomas (How to Succeed in Nursing School (Nursing School, Nursing school supplies, Nursing school gifts, Nursing school books, Become a nurse, Become a registered nurse,))
“
A picture may say a thousand words, but it can hide a thousand tears and a thousand lies.
”
”
Jennifer J. LaBelle
“
Do you think they’ll ever be a place for us? I mean, do you think there’s a place for someone who lives under the radar, someone who has to pretend, someone who is a spy?”
“Yes.” Daly said it with such confidence that I sat up in my bed, my cast dangling over the edge.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“There has to be. I don’t usually philosophize, but I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That even when we’re pretending, even when we’re hiding under wigs or accents or clothes that aren’t our style, we can’t hide our nature. Just like I knew from the moment I met you that you would choose this life. And just like I knew, when you told me about this mission, that you would agree to help the CIA find this girl. You would sacrifice yourself and your time with your brother to save someone. It’s just who you are.”
“I’ve already messed things up, Daly. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do it?”
“That’s the thing, though. You’ll find a way.”
I lay back again and buried the side of my face into my pillow. “I’m just not sure how.”
“If you continue to think as you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got,” Daly said. I considered that. I wasn’t ready to give up. At least not yet. “That one is Itosu wisdom, in case you wondered.”
I yawned into the phone. “It’s good advice.”
“I’ll let you go. You should be resting. Don’t you have school in the morning?” He said the last part in a teasing tone.
“Yeah, if I make it through another day at school. Maybe they’ll get rid of me—kick me out or something. You’d think I would have inherited some of my mom’s artistic genius.”
“Can I give you one last bit of advice, Alex?”
“Sure.”
“Throw it all out the window.”
“What?” I stared at my open window. A slight breeze blew the gauzelike drapes in and out as if they were a living creature.
“Everything you’ve learned about art, the lines, the colors, the pictures in your head from other artists—just throw it all out. And throw out everything you’ve learned from books and simulations about being a good spy. Don’t try to be like someone else. Don’t force yourself to follow a set of rules that weren’t meant for you. Those work for 99.99% of the people.”
“You’re telling me I’m the .01%?” I asked skeptically.
“No, I’m telling you you’re not even on the scale.” Daly’s soft breathing traveled through the phone line. “With a mind like yours, you can’t be put in a box. Or even expected to stand outside it. You were never meant to hold still, Alex. You have to stack all the boxes up and climb and keep climbing until you find you. I’m just saying that Alexandra Stewart will find her own way.”
The cool night air brushed the skin of my arm and I wished it was Daly’s hand instead. “You sure have a lot of wisdom tonight,” I told him. I expected him to laugh. Instead, the line went silent for a moment. “Because I’m not there. Because I wish I was.” His words were simple, but his message reached inside my heart and left a warmth—a warmth I needed.
“Thank you, James.”
“Take care, Alex.”
I wanted to say more, to keep him at my ear just a little longer. Yet the words itching to break free couldn’t be said from over two thousand miles away. They needed to happen in person. I wasn’t going home until I found Amoriel. Which meant I had to complete this mission. Not just for Amoriel anymore. I had to do it for me. (page 143)
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Robin M. King (Memory of Monet (Remembrandt, #3))
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There is so much truth in the saying: A picture says a thousand words...so always do your best to look great when you take one! http://www.bullyingben.com
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Timothy Pina (Bullying Ben: How Benjamin Franklin Overcame Bullying)
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No is a commanding word. It can be a denial, a rejection, an expression of fear, or an unintended statement of worth. But a thousand noes can be dwarfed by the power of one yes. We say yes to the stuff and people we value.
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Mark Foreman (Never Say No: Raising Big-Picture Kids)
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A couple of weeks before, while going over a Variety list of the most popular songs of 1935 and earlier, to use for the picture’s sound track – which was going to consist only of vintage recording played not as score but as source music – my eye stopped on a .933 standard, words by E.Y. (“Yip”) Harburg (with producer Billy Rose), music by Harold Arlen, the team responsible for “Over the Rainbow”, among many notable others, together and separately. Legend had it that the fabulous Ms. Dorothy Parker contributed a couple of lines. There were just two words that popped out at me from the title of the Arlen-Harburg song, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. Not only did the sentiment of the song encapsulate metaphorically the main relationship in our story –
Say, it’s only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me
– the last two words of the title also seemed to me a damn good movie title.
Alvin and Polly agreed, but when I tried to take it to Frank Yablans, he wasn’t at all impressed and asked me what it meant. I tried to explain. He said that he didn’t “want us to have our first argument,” so why didn’t we table this conversation until the movie was finished? Peter Bart called after a while to remind me that, after all, the title Addie Pray was associated with a bestselling novel. I asked how many copies it had sold in hardcover. Peter said over a hundred thousand. That was a lot of books but not a lot of moviegoers. I made that point a bit sarcastically and Peter laughed dryly.
The next day I called Orson Welles in Rome, where he was editing a film. It was a bad connection so we had to speak slowly and yell: “Orson! What do you think of this title?!” I paused a beat or two, then said very clearly, slowly and with no particular emphasis or inflection: “Paper …Moon!” There was a silence for several moments, and then Orson said, loudly, “That title is so good, you don’t even need to make the picture! Just release the title!
Armed with that reaction, I called Alvin and said, “You remember those cardboard crescent moons they have at amusement parks – you sit in the moon and have a picture taken?” (Polly had an antique photo of her parents in one of them.) We already had an amusement park sequence in the script so, I continued to Alvin, “Let’s add a scene with one of those moons, then we can call the damn picture Paper Moon!” And this led eventually to a part of the ending, in which we used the photo Addie had taken of herself as a parting gift to Moze – alone in the moon because he was too busy with Trixie to sit with his daughter – that she leaves on the truck seat when he drops her off at her aunt’s house.
… After the huge popular success of the picture – four Oscar nominations (for Tatum, Madeline Kahn, the script, the sound) and Tatum won Best Supporting Actress (though she was the lead) – the studio proposed that we do a sequel, using the second half of the novel, keeping Tatum and casting Mae West as the old lady; they suggested we call the new film Harvest Moon. I declined. Later, a television series was proposed, and although I didn’t want to be involved (Alvin Sargent became story editor), I agreed to approve the final casting, which ended up being Jodie Foster and Chris Connolly, both also blondes. When Frank Yablans double-checked about my involvement, I passed again, saying I didn’t think the show would work in color – too cute – and suggested they title the series The Adventures of Addie Pray. But Frank said, “Are you kidding!? We’re calling it Paper Moon - that’s a million-dollar title!” The series ran thirteen episodes.
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Peter Bogdanovich (Paper Moon)
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To see you in love is far more powerful than any other lesson. A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s important that your sons see your physical affection, to see you kiss, cuddle on the couch, hold hands in public. Oh, sure—they’ll say they’re “grossed out,” tell you to “get a room.” But they are watching and learning.
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John Eldredge (The Way of the Wild Heart: A Map for the Masculine Journey)
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their eyes. I’ve never seen human misery so perfectly depicted. What’s that cliché? A picture is worth a thousand words? Well, it’s inaccurate. I could write a million words and never come close to capturing the emotion I’m seeing here. The suffering I’m seeing. The black, bottomless pain. In a hushed voice, Edmond says, “The collection is titled Perspectives of Grief.
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J.T. Geissinger (Perfect Strangers)
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I was well aware this wasn’t a word most lethal operatives like myself would use, but I had always marched to the beat of my own drummer. “You paint quite the scary picture, Professor,” I continued, raising my eyebrows. “Why do I have the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this?” Singh smiled. “Not quite the first time, no,” she replied. “I guess I have gone into lecture mode. And it’s a lot to absorb. So let me wind this down. The bottom line is that the rates of substance and behavioral addictions have skyrocketed. Our levels of stress and neurosis have too. The furious pace of our advancements, and the toxicities and manipulations I just described, are outstripping our psyches, which were evolved for a simpler existence.” “Do you have statistics on the extent of the problem?” asked Ashley. “It’s impossible to really get your arms around,” replied Singh, “but I’ll try. In 1980, fewer than three thousand Americans died of a drug overdose. By 2021 that number had grown to over a hundred thousand. More than thirty-fold! And it’s only grown since then. “And these are just the mortality stats. Many times this number are addicts. Estimates vary pretty widely, but I can give you numbers that I believe to be accurate. Fifteen to twenty million Americans are addicted to alcohol. Over twenty-five million suffer from nicotine dependence. Many millions more are addicted to cocaine, or heroin, or meth, or fentanyl—which is a hundred times stronger than morphine—or an ever-growing number of other substances. Millions more are addicted to gambling. Or online shopping. Or porn.” Singh frowned deeply. “When it comes to the internet, cell phones, and other behavioral addictions, the numbers are truly immense. Probably half the population. The average smart phone user now spends over three hours a day on this device. And when it comes to our kids, the rate of phone addiction is even higher. Much higher. In some ways, it’s nearly universal. “Meanwhile, many parents insist their children keep this addiction device with them at all times. They’re thrilled to be able to reach their kids every single second of their lives, and track their every movement.” There was a long, stunned silence in the room. “I could go on for days,” said Singh finally. “But I think that gives you some sense of what we’re currently facing as a society.” I tried to think of something humorous to say. Something to lighten the somber mood, which was my instinctive reaction when things got depressing. But in this case, I had nothing. Singh had called the current situation a crisis. But even this loaded term couldn’t begin to do it justice.
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Douglas E. Richards (Portals)
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The First Water is the Body (excerpt)
The Colorado River is the most endangered river in the United States—also, it is a part of my body.
I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not metaphor.
When a Mojave says, Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum, we are saying our name. We are telling a story of our existence. The river runs through the middle of my body.
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What threatens white people is often dismissed as myth. I have never been true in America. America is my myth.
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When Mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. A great weeping is how you might translate it. Or a river of grief.
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I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me right now.
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The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. An ecstatic state of energy, always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement.
Energy is a moving river moving my moving body.
In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by the letters ‘ii and ‘a: ‘iimat for body, ‘amat for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care. You might not know we mean both.
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What is this third point, this place that breaks a surface, if not the deep-cut and crooked bone bed where the Colorado River runs—a one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-mile thirst—into and through a body?
Berger called it the pre-verbal. Pre-verbal as in the body when the body was more than body. Before it could name itself body and be limited, bordered by the space body indicated.
Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue energy greening, greened and bluing the stone, red and floodwater, the razorback fish, the beetle, and the cottonwoods’ and willows’ shaded shadows.
Pre-verbal was when the body was more than a body and possible. One of its possibilities was to hold a river within it.
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If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing inside me, if the very shape of my throat, of my thighs is for wetness, how can I say who I am if the river is gone?
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Where I come from we cleanse ourselves in the river. I mean: The water makes us strong and able to move forward into what is set before us to do with good energy.
We cannot live good, we cannot live at all, without water.
If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is it too difficult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a sidewinder or your own mother or your beloveds?
If I could convince you, would our brown bodies and our blue rivers be more loved and less ruined?
The Whanganui River in New Zealand now has the same legal rights of a human being. In India, the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers now have the same legal status of a human being. Slovenia’s constitution now declares access to clean drinking water to be a national human right. While in the United States, we are teargassing and rubber-bulleting and kenneling Natives trying to protect their water from pollution and contamination at Standing Rock in North Dakota. We have yet to discover what the effects of lead-contaminated water will be on the children of Flint, Michigan, who have been drinking it for years.
America is a land of bad math and science. The Right believes Rapture will save them from the violence they are delivering upon the earth and water; the Left believes technology, the same technology wrecking the earth and water, will save them from the wreckage or help them build a new world on Mars.
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Natalie Díaz (Postcolonial Love Poem)
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it is up to the author to write those thousand words. – Richard Petracca
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Richard Petracca
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Damian, who do you admire?’
I said, ‘St Roch, sir.’
The others stopped talking.
‘Who does he play for?’
‘No one, sir. He’s a saint.’
The others went back to football.
‘He caught the plague and hid in the woods so he wouldn’t infect anyone, and a dog came and fed him every day. Then he started to do miraculous cures and people came to see him – hundreds of people – in his hut in the woods. He was so worried about saying the wrong thing to someone that he didn’t say a word for the last ten years of his life.’ ‘
We could do with a few like him in this class. Thank you, Damian.’ ‘
He’s the patron saint of plague, cholera and skin complaints. While alive, he performed many wonders.’ ‘Well, you learn something new.’
He was looking for someone else now, but I was enjoying being excellent. Catherine of Alexandria (4th century) came to mind.
‘They wanted her to marry a king, but she said she was married to Christ. So, they tried to crush her on a big wooden wheel, but it shattered into a thousand splinters – huge sharp splinters – which flew into the crowd, killing and blinding many bystanders.’ ‘
That’s a bit harsh. Collateral damage, eh?
Well, thank you, Damian.’ By now everyone had stopped debating players versus managers. They were all listening to me.
‘After that they chopped her head off. Which did kill her, but instead of blood, milk came spurting out of her neck. That was one of her wonders.’ ‘Thank you, Damian.’ ‘She’s the patron saint of nurses, fireworks, wheel-makers and the town of Dunstable (Bedfordshire). The Catherine wheel is named after her. She’s a virgin martyr. There are other great virgin martyrs. For instance, St Sexburga of Ely (670– 700).’
Everyone started laughing. Everyone always laughs at that name. They probably laughed at it in 670– 700 too.
‘Sexburga was Queen of Kent. She had four sisters, who all became saints. They were called—’
Before I could say Ethelburga and Withburga, Mr Quinn said, ‘Damian, I did say thank you.’
He actually said thank you three times. If that doesn’t make me excellent, I don’t know what does. I was also an artistic inspiration, as nearly all the boys painted pictures of the collateral damage at the execution of St Catherine. There were a lot of fatal flying splinters and milk spurting out of necks. Jake painted Wayne Rooney, but he was the only one.
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Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions)
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They say, "A picture is worth a thousand words" but in reality it is a solitary word, such as love, that shall inspire a billion paintings.
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P.H. Wilson
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A picture says a thousand words.
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Charlotte McGinlay (Returning To You)
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I don't want to be dramatic. I don't want to leave a note. Notes are for girls and faggots. If I do it, I'll do it in such a way that there won't be any mistaking the fact that it was a suicide. I would hang myself - that's plenty unambiguous. The proverbial picture worth a thousand words. That picture, alone, would say to whoever found me: "Look. I didn't want to be here.
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Nicole Cushing (Mr. Suicide)