Man is a coward in space, for he is by himself.

Do you follow the wrestling? Most people think it’s illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and Python are on display this evening.

With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.

When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.

It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”[MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don’t care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell...

Having contact sheets for all sorts of episodes in your life seemed to me intriguing and desirable. So much of my own history is beclouded by time, but a few sharp rays, in the form of pictures, falling upon a given day would resuscitate whole contexts. And from this archipelago of moments, scenes, episodes, you...

…you do violence with your words if you force them – art is given – the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands – call it a Muse …

Until you’ve been washed ashore you can’t know how all encompassing the sea has become.

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can...

Is everyone who lives in Ignorance like you?” asked Milo.”Much worse,” he said longingly. “But I don’t live here. I’m from a place very far away called Context.

After 9/11, we did see Palestinian terrorism in the context of all terrorism.

One who has lived through the days of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese war lords feels something that a younger generation does not concerning the aberrations that are possible in this world.

Writers use narratives to select from everything there is, and make contexts by putting the pieces into relation; that’s what writers do, they make contexts.

Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small – too small, that is, to contain...

Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects – inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things....

The will to truth is enshrined in the mind. It is undeniable, inescapable, mutable only if one’s humanity itself is rejected, itself muted. Yet the form of this truth, whether it be elaborate, simple, exclusive and regulatory or comprehensive and positive… this is a matter of aesthetics, taste……It is all inherently meaningless, the puzzle just...

When there is no news, we will give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say ‘God is love,’ they will claim that you are taking things out of context!

I need to be able to explain myself in context.

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of...

Great experiences are built on a foundation of bad experiences.

But however minimal, however threadbare, it (collective memory) is ballast of a kind. We all need that seven-eighths of the iceberg, the ballast of the past, a general past, the place from which we came.That is why history should be taught in school. to all children, as much of it as possible. If you have...

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.

You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the...

What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?

The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew

Corporate & personal branding both require storytelling to be captivating. Stories provide context, meaning & the opportunity for relationship.

Of course, in television’s presentation of the “news of the day,” we may see the Now…this” mode of discourse in it’s boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as...

The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what’s fascinating to me.

Conformity is a problem for many small groups. Members put a higher priority on cohesion than on coming up with a well-reasoned choice. They pressure dissenters, shield themselves from negative feedback, keep silent when they disagree …

You know, Junie, you’re fourteen now. I think you can certainly manage to put together a sandwich. …The thing is, if my mother had any idea what I had in my backpack, she would have made me that sandwich. If she knew that I’d searched and searched the house until I finally found the little...