Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.
A. S. Byatt
I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.
Alvaro Enrigue
I play games on-set at work. Sometimes I can't remember people's names, so I start throwing out clues. Like if I can't think of George Clooney, I'll say, 'You know, drop-dead gorgeous, was on a big TV show... ' Until someone says his name, I can't finish my story!
Andie MacDowell
I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
Anne Tyler
Investigating rare diseases gives researchers more clues about how the healthy immune system functions.
Anthony Fauci
I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.
August Wilson
You really have to be careful with the clues you lay into the film - if they're too heavy-handed, or you've pandered to a slightly stupider audience, then you've spoiled it for the people who are even slightly smart.
Ben Wheatley
Find somebody who has been successful, and learn how to do it. Find somebody who has been unsuccessful, and learn how not to do it. The clues are there. Find 'em.
Booger McFarland
Success leaves clues, and if you sow the same seeds, you'll reap the same rewards.
Brad Thor
Only in retrospect can I find clues to my father's gayness. Sometimes the dull detritus of our pasts become glaring strands once you realize they form a pattern, a lighted path to the present.
Carrie Brownstein
I think Aaron Sorkin is like Shakespeare. When you go through it, there is a rhythm and clues all over the place of how it should be played.
Chris Messina
Shakespeare gives you these clues - these little pieces of gold dust, I call them. They tell you so much about the story, the character, the drive, the intentions. It's like a gift.
Christian Camargo
The possibility that lysosomes might accidentally become ruptured under certain conditions, and kill or injure their host-cells as a result, was considered right after we got our first clues to the existence of these particles.
Christian de Duve
How do you solve a mystery? How do you write a book? The techniques for starting both are surprisingly similar. Find an intriguing question and, pen and dagger tucked under cloak, search for clues.
Claire Cameron
Yeah, I think if I were to go again, I'd try to go more on gut feelings and stick with it. I was on to Frederique. I found clues for everything, I found tons of stuff.
Corbin Bernsen
I think the process is one of using the camera and sound in the way a detective uses a magnifying glass: to find the clues. They're discovery devices, not performance devices - you're watching things the way a cat does. You're not judging. You're there to witness something.
D. A. Pennebaker
Art historians agree that Da Vinci's paintings contain hidden levels of meaning that go well beneath the surface of the paint. Many scholars believe his work intentionally provides clues to a powerful secret... a secret that remains protected to this day by a clandestine brotherhood of which Da Vinci was a member.
Dan Brown
Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.
Dani Shapiro
There are certainly some secrets the government needs to protect, but many of the most important clues about revolutions, nuclear transfers, and new military sites can be found online, in open chat rooms and commercial satellite photos.
David E. Sanger
I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.
Deborah Harkness
When I was auditioning, I didn't know it was 'Daredevil.' Everything was secret. They're secret agents. They wouldn't give you any clues. I was a big fan of the show, and I think it helped me, once I got the part, to really understand the world that they live in. It helped me during shooting.
I really work on paying attention to the clues my self is giving myself. For instance, I think of myself in the third person. That allows me to manage myself better.
Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible.
The walking wounded, impaired in life and dissected in death, were our primary clues to where and how parts of the brain work.
Foucault's genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.
I have about 20 to 25 platonic relationships with women all across the board from professional to artistic and they always give little clues on what they like.
I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.
I write in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sided game: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the story's up to - and I'm giving them clues and matter to keep them interested without giving everything away at the start. Even the rules, if any, of the game are for the reader to discover.
Junk stands and antique markets are the perfect place to pick up clues about the history of a country, region or town.
I think everything happens organically. You mine for clues. It's all immersive, and stuff you can use comes out of that immersion. I don't really like to wear wigs in movies because I like to look like the character all the time.
I think a lot of people make a big misstep when they assume what an artist is going to be interested in, so I try to just take that out of the equation and make sure whenever I'm talking to people about their music, I'm getting all my context clues from that - and then we go to work.
The thing I loved about Alfred Hitchcock is that he left a lot of open ends there, a lot of clues that didn't really add up the way you think they would, and sometimes, not at all.
I do not look to Hollywood to give me character clues.
I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.
Physics is about questioning, studying, probing nature. You probe, and, if you're lucky, you get strange clues.
The best science frequently combines an awareness of broad and significant problems with focus on an apparently small issue or detail that someone very much wants to solve or understand. Sometimes these little problems or inconsistencies turn out to be the clues to big advances.
I'm not necessarily scanning for clues when I make documentaries.
Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.
I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what's important in their lives.
Think of your early dates as a chance to leave clues about your expectations with a little technique called pre-framing. Say: 'My friend gets annoyed because her boyfriend never opens the car door for her. It's a shame when guys don't do those little things.'
Criticism always seemed to me a lot like police work. You look for clues, fingerprints, motives. You need to construct an airtight case.
People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.
Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.
And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.
I wasn't really conscious about 'The 39 Clues' movie when I wrote 'The Black Circle.'
I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.
With the '39 Clues,' we were making history jump out of the page for the readers, so they don't know they're learning. The kids can't put the books down - it's so exciting.
I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.
Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.
You get to crack the code of the play. You get to really pick at it and see, 'What is the story that we're telling?' 'What are the clues in the text that I can find that will help inform what story we're telling?' It's almost like a detective mystery.
