Variation Quotations

I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'

In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.

The older the layers, the more each of them is uniform over a great extent; the newer the layers, the more they are limited and subject to variation within small distances.

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.

The problem with digital architecture is that an algorithm can produce endless variations, so an architect has many choices.

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.

The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.

By packaging a full album into a bundle of music with ringtones, videos and other combinations and variations, we found products that consumers demonstrably valued and were willing to purchase at premium prices. And guess what? We've sold tons of them.

In skating there's always another jump or another spin variation or another thing to learn, and that's what I liked about it.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place.

A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.

I believe the earth's climate is changing, but I think it's changing for natural variation reasons and I think mankind has been adapting to climate as long as man has walked the earth.

After every movie, I always kick myself for the same things-didn't do enough, not enough variation, not enough interesting choices, too bland.

Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.

When nobody read, dyslexia wasn't a problem. When most people had to hunt, a minor genetic variation in your ability to focus attention was hardly a problem, and may even have been an advantage. When most people have to make it through high school, the same variation can become a genuinely life-altering disease.

People may have said that without symptoms, you can't transmit Ebola. I'm not sure about that being 100 percent true. There's a lot of variation with viruses.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

I had the afro when I was in high school. I had the flattop during a short period in the early '90s. And I've had different variations of dreadlocks. I'll admit to those!

You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body.

I think maybe I might have to do what some other authors do, which is do a variation on my name, just to send readers the message that, 'Yep, this is me, but this is a different part of me. So brace yourself.'

The moment at which music reveals its true nature is contained in the ancient exercise of the theme with variations. The complete mystery of music is explained right there.

The sea always offers up incredible stories of survivors' fortitude. Myths of a lot of countries have variations on that.

All evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence... I had to place myself amidst the variation.

At any time of day, hundreds of different versions of Facebook are running on the Internet - with a changed color here, a moved button there - and the user response to each variation is measured. And the same is done with advertising.

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.

There are endless new variations on how to hurt a woman physically, emotionally, financially, and socially,

Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so - it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth.

I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

When the Internet publicity began, I remember being struck by how much the world was not the way we thought it was, that there was infinite variation in how people viewed the world.

My serve can get better, for sure. It's not just about serving bombs, but positioning, variation in speed, in spin.

The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees - and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse.

One of the surprises in this study, where we put some of the people through the same protocol five times, is that there is substantial variation with a person on how they respond day to day. That can be due to a lot of potential sources, including environmental factors, that we don't understand.

Pepper jelly seems like a modern variation on chutney. It offers an interesting balance of sweet and heat. The idea of serving it with a mild cheese like brie or gruyere is appealing.

If this is just a variation of the millions of ideas already out there, no one is going to be interested. There are too many calendars chasing too little retail space. There's going to be fallout in the industry.

Since month-to-month variation is anticipated, the most recent information suggests only a modest departure from the strong upward trend.

'Minute to Win It' is a variation on a game show from the 1950s called 'Beat the Clock,' in which contestants won washing machines and fox stoles by doing such pointless stunts as catching a tennis ball in a paper cup or knocking a hat off one's wife's head with a whipped-cream spritzer.

She's got so much time, she's got so much variation on her shots. I just had to take care of my side most of the time. I know if they attack her, she's always ready. That makes life a lot more easy on the mixed doubles court.

There are not many original shapes or silhouettes -- only a million variations.

We're pleased to extend our collaboration which combines our strengths in analyzing and understanding genetic variation associated with multiple common diseases with Merck's extensive knowledge of the biology underlying neurodegenerative diseases and its global leadership in the development of innovative therapeutics. This target validation program is one example of the value we're able to provide our therapeutic partners worldwide; other examples include identifying individuals who may benefit most from early therapeutic treatment and predict those individuals who will best respond to new therapies.

I make up stories about people who are either imaginary or some variation of myself.

Our re-analysis revealed that the distance of a village from the coast and the height of the village above sea level explained 87 percent of the variation in mortality among villages.

Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And then, you try to create as much surprise and spontaneity and feeling and variation while respecting that structure.

I think a lot of guys at some point and time show some variation of that pitch.

Research has shown that IQ type tests account for about 10% of the variation in how successful people are in various aspects of their adult lives.

Our results indicate loneliness is not a personality weakness. Quite the contrary, it is just part of the genetic variation that we find in humans.

I think one of the take-home messages is that variation can be created rapidly with just a few naturally occurring mutations.

I think he'll be good for us. Just watching him, he knows what it takes for him to get ready. I've been watching him do his drills and stuff and it's fun to watch. He's a different style of goalie and has his own style. It's not really one thing. He knows a lot of shooters and he'll play a little variation of everything. It's almost maybe better for him to have that year to get ready. He looks good with us and played well (in camp). I don't think anybody has a concern about him at all.

I think it's the only completely American sport that there is. Most of the team sports are a variation on the old medieval tournaments, but stock car racing is so American. It's astounding to me how many people are interested in stock car racing.

The problem is the technology picks up some kind of anomaly or variation of soil. We go in with big backhoes and bulldozers, we spend all day doing it, and all we hit is rock or water tables.

The analysis reveals great variation within New Orleans, but there is a general tendency for blacks and poor residents to have greater odds of being in harm's way, because they lived in less desirable, low-lying areas.

The 24-hour variation suggested that the system was very dynamic and that more than a single measurement was needed to tell us if the carbon dioxide rates were going up, staying the same or going down.

You just try and do as much variation and as much difference and as much as possible, so you put yourself out there to try anything, really. As long as you feel you're going to get something out of the experience, it's all worth it.

We are now beyond nature's normal variation in terms of how the atmosphere is composed. Nature did something for a million years. It actually goes back a lot further than that, but the ice core records show a million years. So, nature has this normal oscillation within this zone, and all of a sudden, we're forty percent outside that zone.

Half the variations which are calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, no one knows in advance which half

There are about a thousand different variations on a horse neigh. Some of them sound like a horse having sex, some of them like a horse having sad sex.

The promoter is all you need for activation and silencing. It's the main site of action where everything is happening. This is the first time anyone has actually been able to infiltrate an antigenic variation program.

When you are bowling at such a high velocity and trying to get momentum through the crease and try to bowl a yorker you only look at a slight variation in your trajectory to the wicket.

The experiment is to ask the question; the observation is to look at yourself and see what happens. Being a science the law cannot vary. Any apparent variation is in you, you will have stepped off the way of facts into conclusions.

Collect impressions. Don't be in a hurry to write them down. Because that's something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.

Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.

Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.

The dealer installation brings an additional layer of uncertainty into the process, ... The dealers have to be trained, and some will consider it to be more of a priority than others. There's less variation in factory installation.

The range of variation in the female far exceeds the range of variation in the male.

My works have always been unjoined. People were always making variations of my works, and I just said, "I don't want to know." You can't put limits on those pieces. You can't be there all of the time when they're installed.

There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.

Every (stressful thought) is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn't fair.

Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.

The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits;...

It has therefore been justly observed that however honestly the coin of a country may conform to its standard, money made of gold and silver is still liable to fluctuations in value, not only to accidental, and temporary, but to permanent and natural variations, in the same manner as other commodities.

Whether the NFL wants to admit it, betting is also a part of why people watch football, ... I think fantasy football is probably a variation of that.

CRP has a good earning capacity, and it is our ambition to improve it further. Its order backlog for 2006 is at a good level and we believe the market will be strong over the next few years. However, it is important to remember that this business are almost entirely project-related, which entails great variation in order bookings and consequently also in invoicing between different quarters.

Each class will begin with fun, physical activities, such as circuit workouts, a 'Mission Possible' exercise challenge, or maybe even a new variation of a game like tag. Kids typically have so much fun with these activities that they don't even think of it as exercise.

The striking evolutionary conservation of ratchetting points suggests that recursive splicing provides specific advantages for large introns, ... One possibility is that recursive splicing prevents the generation of long RNA transcripts that could form structures that interfere with correct processing into mRNA. Another is that recursive splicing might help stimulate transcription through long introns by promoting interactions between the splicing and transcription machineries. We also know already that recursive splicing is used to control the removal of certain exons from mRNAs, generating structural and functional variation among the gene products.

You get this kind of variation (away from normal) more often in winter than in summer. But this has been really unusual, to have it this long in the heart of winter.

We don't yet know what factors determine whether people with this genetic variation do or don't end up with dyslexia, ... A host of environmental and genetic influences likely influences or determines whether somebody with this particular genetic variation ends up being dyslexic or not. And until the nature of some of those other influences is fully specified, we won't know what it means to say to somebody that their 5-year-old child has this particular genetic endowment.

Be the inferior of no man, nor of any be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.

After all these years of cooking and writing recipes, I am still amazed every time I notice how even the minutest of variation in technique can make a spectacular difference.

extremely sensitive to variation and can result in different ratings in the same vehicle, such as when one has leather-covered seats and the other has cloth-covered seats.

That's how I play. I'm going to have maybe 50 unforced errors one day, but I'm going to also have 50 winners that day. People just have to accept me the way I play. Maybe I can add variation to my game, but I'm going to win matches only when I hit those winners.

People should realize that there is variation here. Everybody wants to focus on the average. Nobody is average.

There should be a three-year moratorium on pitches of any variation of American Idol .

You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that at least some of that variation is inherited - and the syllogistic inference is natural selection.

This is the beginning of variable pricing so we can respond on a micro level to be sure we can attract and retain as many customers as we can. With the variation in the pricing, we can respond to specific rivals.

This is the first time anyone has actually been able to infiltrate an antigenic variation program. We forced the cell to switch our gene on and others off.

I never really planned a career. I've tried to avoid it. I've tried to do this stuff I felt for, the stuff I like. So, I've just been meeting these fantastic directors who've offered me a variation of different parts and different films.

If the number is 50,000 above or below, that's a variation where you'll see a reaction. If it's below, then people will right away start talking about what the revision will be next month.

If Judge Roberts repeatedly resorts to the so-called 'Ginsburg Precedent,' it will sound less like a principled refusal to answer and more like a variation on the Fifth Amendment: 'I refuse to answer that question on the ground that it may incriminate me. Answering may reveal my actual views about constitutional law and cause me to lose votes,'

The Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers program and a variation of the Thrift Savings Plan, the Military Savings Plan, being opened up to active-duty military personnel were the result of AFAP initiatives.

Everybody loves pizza, and kids love pizza, and this is a nice variation because it's not your same old tomato sauce and cheese.

The next step is to find out what biological difference imparted by this genetic difference causes selection to favor that variation over the others.

Because food-chain length influences the bioaccumulation of contaminants, understanding the causes of variation in food-chain length will help us understand the variation of contaminant concentrations,

Unfortunately, with dinosaurs, we haven't had enough specimens to determine how much variation there is within a species.

Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathroom. For the ear, he is an unutterable bore.

In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...