A Quote by Terry Southern

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

Terry Southern

Quote Topics

Astonish Capacity Important Important Thing Out Shock Thing Word Worn Writing

Quote Author

Terry Southern
American - Novelist
May 1, 1924 - October 29, 1995

One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it.

Diana Wynne Jones

When the artist ... intends from the beginning to be obscure and take obscurity as his objective or goal for its own sake and wishes to astonish, shock, and seem mysterious, that is a swindle.

Tawfiq al-Hakim

Men astonish themselves far more than they astonish their friends.

Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.

Anthony Bourdain

In order to produce learned fear, you take a neutral stimulus like a tone, and you pair it with an electrical shock. Tone, shock. Tone, shock. So the animal learns that the tone is bad news. But you can also do the opposite - shock it at other times, but never when the tone comes on.

Eric Kandel

Shock is shock. Your body goes into shock, regardless of it being real blood or fake blood. The mind sends powerful messages to all the various glands and secretions in the body. It's impossible trying to act it; it just happens. It's a very important question: no acting.

Ben Kingsley

Anything that you can shock somebody with. The only way to change something is to shock it. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them.

Jaden Smith

if you are perfectly willing to shock an individual verbally, the next thing you will be doing is to shock him practically.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

When Mahavishnu came out in '71, the unbelievable reaction to the band was a real shock to me. It was a shock to everybody.

John McLaughlin

Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.

Alvin Toffler

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

Henri Matisse

In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds.

David Blaine

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.