Black Swan Quotes

Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.' ~ Robert Gottlieb

I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

My involvement with the Black Swan is usually more hands off. But today I must play babysitter, so I get to be this." He waved his hands at his fur before going back to scratching, and Sophie got a feeling she wasn't going to be a fan of Coiffe. ~ Shannon Messenger

I'll always remember that's you found me and brought me to the Lost Cities and showed me where I really belong. And that you came when I called for help and saved me from fading away. And you left everything behind to go with me when I joined the Black Swan. Need me to keep going? Because I can."

His smile was a beautiful thing.

But it didn't last. ~ Shannon Messenger

I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

And the Black Swan is what we leave out of simplification. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I covered the scar with concealer every day because I wanted my body to be a flawless figurine, but this blemish would be with me forever. ~ Scarlet Risque

Perfection is not just about control, it is also about letting go. ~ Vincent Cassel

I have this really morbid, awesome love for the movie 'Black Swan.' ~ Sherri Saum

The Neverseen may think themselves brilliant schemers, full of plans no one would ever suspect.
But when it came to game-changing secrets, the Black Swan would always be the best. ~ Shannon Messenger

'Don't Look Back' is my first YA contemporary mystery/thriller. It's been described as 'Black Swan' meets 'Pretty Little Liars'. ~ Jennifer Armentrout

The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

(Amongst those thus enslaved was Lady Johanna Swann, a fifteen-year-old niece of the Lord of Stonehelm. When her infamously niggardly uncle refused to pay the ransom, she was sold to a pillow house, where she rose to become the celebrated courtesan known as the Black Swan, and ruler of Lys in all but name. Alas, her tale, however fascinating, has no bearing upon our present history.) ~ George R R Martin

The trumpeter is beautiful to behold, graceful and elegant, just like our Ms. Swan. But if you disturb a trumpeter, trespass through its territory, or threaten its nest, it will hiss like a cobra and attack with the viciousness of a wolf. That is the black swan side. ~ Suzanne Selfors

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Remember that you are a Black Swan. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor. ~ James A. Michener

Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A rare bird upon the earth and very much like a black swan. ~ Juvenal

What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. ~ Robert Gottlieb

The narrative fallacy, Bezos explained, was a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan to describe how humans are biologically inclined to turn complex realities into soothing but oversimplified stories. ~ Anonymous

If troubled companies want to explain away 2008 as a 'black swan,' then someone should take responsibility for creating the oil slick that seems to have tarred the entire flock! ~ Andrew Lo

In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The true hero in the Black Swan world is someone who prevents a calamity and, naturally, because the calamity did not take place, does not get recognition - or a bonus - for it. I will be taking the concept deeper in Book VII, on ethics, about the unfairness of a bonus system and how such unfairness is magnified by complexity. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth - remember that you are a Black Swan. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Slashing its way to the finish line, 'Black Swan' is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror. ~ James Wolcott

Technical things are getting more mechanical. Take 'Swan Lake,' the Black Swan pas de deux. Now, my goodness, they're turning not just 32 fouettes - but double or triple pirouettes. ~ Natalia Makarova

A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan. ~ Juvenal

But we're just kids she thought For the moment yes But we are talking about the future You really think we'll still need a Black Swan that many years from now Yes I believe we will always need a Black Swan The world has gotten too complicated to leave any one group solely in charge There needs to be a system of checks and balances We do hope to someday work hand in hand with the Council But even if that never happens we should be there to keep them honest ~ Shannon Messenger

Let's go join the Black Swan! ~ Shannon Messenger

Mistaking a naive observation of the past as something definitive or representative of the future is the one and only cause of our inability to understand the Black Swan. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Everything will be better in the morning. It always is. ~ Barbara Hershey

When You Return

Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back in the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters un-write themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark's lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider's belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart. ~ Ellen Bass

Last year, when 'Black Swan,' 'True Grit' and 'King's Speech' all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies and not do the same old you-know-what. ~ Harvey Weinstein

The Black Swan asymmetry allows you to be confident about what is wrong, not about what you believe is right. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

that the Black Swan has three attributes: unpredictability, consequences, and retrospective explainability. Let ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I think that all services will have downtime. No matter how much you prepare, have redundant systems, or audit, there will periodically be a black swan event that is completely unlike whatever you've experienced before. It even happens to Google! ~ Matt Mullenweg

'Black Swan' does what Hollywood movies have always done - it spends its energies on getting some surface things right while getting everything important wrong. Darren Aronofsky, the director, applies the same techniques and the same sensibility here as he did with 'The Wrestler,' only with a prettier protagonist. ~ Robert Gottlieb

The only person standing in your way is you. ~ Vincent Cassel

Linda hadn't exaggerated her fear of the golden orb weaver spider. Up north at her cabin in Morley, I had once teased her by asking "Have we ever seen this kind of vireo before?" And then, instead of showing her a photo of a bird, I thrust a picture of the black-and-yellow spider at her. She shrieked. I laughed. Oh, the fun we had. ~ Bob Tarte

With Metavoid, I wanted to move forward with the Lustmord sound, rather than recreating past works such as Heresy or Black Stars, I wanted to create a sound that was new, but which was also unmistakably Lustmord. It's for others to decide if I failed or succeeded. ~ Brian Williams

If we are part of nature, then we are synonymous with it at the metaphysical level, every bit as much as the first all-but-inorganic animalcules that ever formed a chain of themselves in the blow hole of a primordial sea vent. There is no magic rod that comes down three hundred thousand years ago and divides our essence from the material world that produced us. This means that we cannot speak in essential terms of nature - neither of its brutality nor of its beauty - and hope to say anything true, if what we say isn't true of ourselves.

The importance of that proposition becomes clear only when it's reversed: What's true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. As far as Rafinesque was concerned, it was just hard science. That part is mysterious. "She lives her life not as men or birds," said Rafinesque, "but as a world. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through it s black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. ~ David Whyte

A minimum-wage law, a law that prevents employers and employees from entering into mutually beneficial economic exchanges, is as far from a free market or free enterprise as one can get. That's why it causes so much damage and destruction, especially to black teenagers and others whose labor, for one reason or another, is valued by employers at less than the government-established minimum wage. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

But non of this matters, because you're not going to listen to your token black Jewish bi friend, are you? ~ Michelle Hodkin

It doesn't matter what you're chasing, when you get there you're gonna be like, "Oh, is this all? It kind of sucks." ~ Michael Ian Black

It's only through the degradation of the soul that you can know who you really are; when all else is stripped away, leaving you bare." Somehow, his black eyes darkened, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper's bite. "Let me degrade you, Katherine. ~ Dianna Hardy

The revolution of Saint Domingo was taking its course. I saw that the whites could not endure, because they were divided and because they were overpowered by numbers; I congratulated myself that I was a black man. ~ Toussaint Louverture

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's. ~ John Mayer

When you travel a lot, you learn to pack the same for every trip. Six white shirts, two black trousers. The bare minimum you need to survive. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Acts of psychological abuse include berating or humiliating the victim; interrogating the victim; restricting the victim's ability to come and go freely; obstructing the victim's access to assistance (e.g., law enforcement; legal, protective, or medical resources); threatening the victim with physical harm or sexual assault; harming, or threatening to harm, people or things that the victim cares about; unwarranted restriction of the victim's access to or use of economic resources; isolating the victim from family, friends, or social support resources; stalking the victim; and trying to make the victim think that he or she is crazy. ~ Donald W. Black

You're mixing your metaphors. It gives me a headache. ~ Holly Black

Not one thought entered my head that did not seem disloyal. I was ashamed, seeing their pride close up, as if for the first time, at how little I had accomplished, how much I had failed to do at St. Paul's. Somewhere in the last two years I had forgotten my mission. What had I done, I kept thinking, that was worthy of their faith? How had I helped my race? How had I prepared myself for a meaningful future? ... They were right: only a handful of us got this break. I wanted to shout at them that I had squandered it. Now that it's all over, hey, I'm not your girl! I couldn't do it. ~ Lorene Cary

One day you're going to get arrested, and when you do, don't call me. I'll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson."
Because there were some black parents who'd actually do that, not pay their kid's bail, not hire their kid a lawyer - the ultimate tough love. But it doesn't always work, because you're giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You're trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life. ~ Trevor Noah

People hear the soul, black influence in my voice. I grew up listening to CKLW and all the black stations like WLBS. ~ Madonna Ciccone

The truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I. ~ Natasha Romanoff

Now that Janet and Frances were older, Grandpa would let them visit him in his study, where the parrot lived. Grandpa came from a long line of parrot-keeping men, and Polly's predecessor, a white cockatoo, had fought with Wellington's armies in the Napoleonic Wars. Janet's father's earliest memories were of the astonishing oaths known to this bird, who was then a hundred and two years old and spoke in ripe gamey accents long since gone from the world of men. Grandpa believed that there must be a fair number of such long-lived birds in Scotland - even perhaps in England - and it would have been a fine thing to have them all gathered in a great dining hall, invoking ghostly midshipmen and dragoons, violent drinkers and merry rhymesters, perhaps even occasionally a lady of refinement. This, he said, would afford a historical experience of rare value; indeed, ancient parrots should be fêted and cultivated as true archivists. ~ Elspeth Barker

The little woman, wearing a pink and black zigzag-striped pantsuit over a black turtleneck, resembled a skinny zebra who'd OD'd on Pepto-Bismol. ~ Vonnie Davis

Yes, that would be Hermione's advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky, blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort's; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the Headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion into his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry's owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write? ~ J.K. Rowling

I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.' ~ Lupita Nyong'o

For the first part of the journey Maia kept her eyes on the side of the road. Now that she was really leaving her friends it was hard to hold back her tears.
She had reached the gulping stage when she heard a loud snapping noise and turned her head. Miss Minton had opened the metal clasp of her large black handbag and was handing her a clean handkerchief, embroidered with the initial A.
"Myself," said the governess in her deep gruff voice, "I would think how lucky I was. How fortunate."
"To go to the Amazon, you mean?"
"To have so many friends who were sad to see me go."
"Didn't you have friends who minded you leaving?"
Miss Minton's thin lips twitched for a moment.
"My sister's canary, perhaps. If he had understood what was happening. Which is extremely doubtful. ~ Eva Ibbotson

The challenges that I face today are the same challenges we all face. Trying to balance your life between work, family, loved ones, your husband, your wife - boyfriend or girlfriend. If you have kids - balancing that, balancing your work with the time you spend with your kids. The idea of wanting to be a good parent and then the motivation to be a great parent. Whether you're black, white, any color. Rich, poor, regardless of religion, cousins of culture, we go through those. We have the same challenges. ~ Dwayne Johnson

So much wanting and longing, clutching, desiring, passion and hatred and terrible need. Here, death was suitable, there was room for it, the grip of life's relentless urges slackened, replaced by this icy simplicity. This wasnt her death. It was his. That was the sad and honest truth. Though it would stay with her, it would be more like a black onyx heart on a silver chain, worn privately, under her clothes, close to her body, all her life. The guilt, the beauty, everything. It wasnt over, it had only begun. Well ok then, Okay. ~ Janet Fitch

In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

A strong argument can be made that Democrats are actually the greater evil, not the lesser one. Black Agenda Report (which provides "news, information and analysis from the black left") uses the phrase "the more effective evil" to describe Barack Obama. While their analysis has focused on non-environmental issues, it holds true for Obama's environmental record as well. Obama appears to be much more effective at advancing anti-environmental policies and programs than Republicans would be. One of the main reasons for this is Demophilia. If Mitt Romney had expanded offshore and onshore oil drilling, promoted nuclear power and fracking, attacked EPA rules, and pushed through trade agreements written by private corporations there would have been huge protests. Yet Obama does all these things with impunity while environmental organizations barely object. Demophilia enables the Democratic Party to get away with it, virtually unchallenged. Regardless ~ Carol Dansereau

The time had come, the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa. ~ Robert W. Chambers

Well who's black and what is a black person? ~ Pam Grier

Maybe my dissertation really had been as brilliant as he claimed, the truth was I remember almost nothing about it; the intellectual leaps I made when I was young were a distant memory to me, and now I was surrounded by a kind of aura, when really my only goal in life was to do a little reading and get in bed at four in the afternoon with a carton of cigarettes and a bottle; and yet, at the same time, I had to admit, I was going to die if I kept that up – I was going to die fast, unhappy and alone. And did I really want to die fast, unhappy and alone? In the end, only kind of. ~ Michel Houellebecq

Amber has a black belt in insensitivity, which she often mistakes for constructive criticism. ~ H.B. Gilmour

No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone
Corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness
Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness
Yours still, you mine, remember all the best
Of our past moments, and forget the rest
And so, to where I wait, come gently on. ~ William Allingham

Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was none left for his head. ~ George R R Martin

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die.
Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs. ~ Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

When Gabriel was about Ivo's age," the duchess remarked almost dreamily, staring out at the plum-colored sky, "he found a pair of orphaned fox cubs in the woods, at a country manor we'd leased in Hampshire. Has he told you about that?"
Pandora shook her head, her eyes wide.
A reminiscent smile curved the duchess's full lips. "It was a pair of females, with big ears, and eyes like shiny black buttons. They made chirping sounds, like small birds. Their mother had been killed in a poacher's trap, so Gabriel wrapped the poor th-things in his coat and brought them home. They were too young to survive on their own. Naturally, he begged to be allowed to keep them. His father agreed to let him raise them under the gamekeeper's supervision, until they were old enough to return the f-forest. Gabriel spent weeks spoon-feeding them with a mixture of meat paste and milk. Later on, he taught them to stalk and catch prey in an outside pen."
"How?" Pandora asked, fascinated.
The older woman glanced at her with an unexpectedly mischievous grin. "He dragged dead mice through their pen on a string."
"That's horrid," Pandora exclaimed, laughing.
"It was," the duchess agreed with a chuckle. "Gabriel pretended not to mind, of course, but it was qu-quite disgusting. Still, the cubs had to learn." The duchess paused before continuing more thoughtfully. "I think for Gabriel, the most difficult part of raising them was having to keep his distance, no matter how he loved t ~ Lisa Kleypas

My name it means nothing
my fortune is less
My future is shrouded in dark wilderness
Sunshine is far away, clouds linger on
Everything I posessed - Now they are gone
Oh where can I go to and what can I do?
Nothing can please me only thoughts are of you
You just laughed when I begged you to stay
I've not stopped crying since you went away
The world is a lonely place when you're on your own
Guess I will go home - sit down and moan.
Crying and thinking is all that I do
Memories I have remind me of you ~ Black Sabbath

The fact is that we have many superstitions, many bad spots and sores on our body - these have to be excised, cut off, and destroyed - but these do not destroy our religion, our national life, our spirituality. Every principle of religion is safe, and the sooner these black spots are purged away, the better the principles will shine, the more gloriously. Stick to them. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Not all loves are meant to last forever. Some burn like fire until there is nothing left but ash and black ink on skin. ~ Zoraida Cordova

If there's a will, there's a way!
I feel larger than LIFE
and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders ... as my fingers tap on my computer late into the night.. ~ Donna Scrima-Black

I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love. ~ Tina Turner

Then the royal party arrived. She didn't know where to look; at the King of Adarlan, at the small, too-familiar prison wagon in the center of the riders... Or at Dorian, riding at his father's side, that black collar around his neck and nothing human in his face. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I was looking for projects, as you always are, and I read this scene ... and I'm in the Hollywood Hills. So I thought, 'This is interesting.' You have this setup that seems to be based in some reality and you can only wonder where Black's going to go with this. ~ Val Kilmer

I'm tired of having to consult a group of old white guys about my black girl craft. They don't even know what they're listening for or to. ~ Azealia Banks

Aging bodies are fiscal black holes into which you can pour endless amounts of money. ~ Richard Lamm

I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit. ~ Chris Hadfield

Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood. ~ Robert E. Howard