#constrain

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies we were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured pride. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. By rights, Talulla knew, she should have been orphaned or raped or paedophilically abused or terminally ill or suicidally depressed or furious at God for her mother’s death or at any rate in some way deranged if she was to be excused for not having killed herself, once it became apparent that she’d have to murder and devour people in order to stay alive. The mere desire to stay alive, in whatever form you’re lumbered with—werewolf, vampire, Father of Lies—really couldn’t be considered a morally sufficient rationale. And yet here she was, staying alive. You love life because life’s all there is. ↗

— Glen Duncan

#death

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth. ↗

— Peter Matthiessen

#limitation #nonfiction #telling #telling the truth #truth

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design. ↗

— Richard Powers

#arrange #constraint #design #dullness #each

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#barriers #constraints #erect #except #human

What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child? ↗

— Delmore Schwartz

#constraints #freedom #memory #dreams

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place. ↗

— Lawrence Summers

#constrained #discourse #during #government #how

Instead of freaking out about these constraints, embrace them. Let them guide you. Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage. ↗

— 37 Signals

#constraints #management #business

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people. ↗

— James Bovard

#american #american people #ancient #candor #come

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for. ↗

— David Byrne

#constraints #intended #only #software #them

I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do. ↗

— Brian Eno

#because #constrained #equivalent #free #i