A Quote by Dennis Potter
Words themselves - the very material of our discourse increasingly take on masks or disguises
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Dysfunction in Washington has stalled any meaningful federal action on gun control. So it's increasingly up to big cities like New York to take bold steps to get weapons off our streets and change the national discourse.
'Words, Words, Words' was very much its title. It's just words, words, words and trying to show that I can pack as much material into an hour as I possibly could word count-wise.
Architecture is a discourse; everything is a discourse. Fashion discourse is actually a micro-discourse, because it's centered around the body. It is the most rapidly developing form of discourse.
No specter assails us in more varied disguises than loneliness, and one of its most impenetrable masks is called love.
In our society, most of us wear protective masks of various kinds and for various reasons. Very often the end result is that the masks grow to us, displacing our original characters with our assumed characters.
Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.
The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?' 'Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.
I work in a world of words - words that inspire, words that persuade and, increasingly, words that can send the message that it is acceptable to hate.
The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.
It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.
One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked.
Ensor sees with his imagination, but his vision is perfectly accurate, of an almost geometric precision. He is one of the very few who can really see. Like you, he has an obsession with masks; he is a seer as you and I are. The common herd, of course thinks that he is mad.*****************You shall see what sort of man Ensor is, and what a marvellous insight he has into the invisible realm where our vices are created... those vices for which our faces make masks.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
When we can't hold back, or set boundaries, on what comes from our lips, our words are in charge-not us. But we are still responsible for those words. Our words do not come from somewhere outside of us, as if we were a ventriloquist's dummy. They are the product of our hearts. Our saying, "I didn't mean that," is probably better translated, "I didn't want you to know I thought that about you." We need to take responsibility for our words. "But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken" (Matt. 12:36).
Choosing the right mask helps you... We went through many masks. It was very particular leather that as soon as you smudged it, you had to get a new one. We went through about 55 masks.
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