Blank Slate Quotes

He had never returned to his family. He'd been a blank slate, and one destined to walk the world until the end of days. Where in such a life was there room for affection? ~ Dekka Nye

Don't get seduced by your own stuff. Don't get high on your own supply. The hardest thing as a filmmaker is when you're watching a film that you've worked on for several years. You know every frame so intimately that holding lots of the objectivity of a new viewer who has just seen it for the first time is the hardest thing. Every aesthetic decision you make - and you make thousands of them every day, have to - in theory, must be done from you being a blank slate. You almost have to run a program, like a mind wipe, every time you watch the movie. ~ James Cameron

Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way. ~ D. B. Weiss

Don't get seduced by your own stuff; work hard to keep a blank slate state of mind each time you watch your film. ~ James Cameron

Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don't mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate. You can't leave behind your skin color, or your height, or the handsomeness or homeliness of your face. But you can leave your story behind. If you've broken hearts, the new place doesn't know. If you've lost trust in people and yourself, the new place doesn't know. If everyone thinks you love Jesus, but you never really have figured out what you believe, the new place doesn't care. It may assume you have it all tied nicely in a bow. All your thoughts and histories. Just feeling like your past isn't a vice to hold you in place can be very freeing. Feeling like your family and the expectations and the traditions and the judgments are absent... it can fill your veins with possibility and fire. ~ Jedidiah Jenkins

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate ... is a totalitarian's dream. ~ Steven Pinker

The mind of a baby is a tabula rasa; society writes information on his mind. ~ Debasish Mridha

My loneliness ... still comes over me sometimes ... It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing. ~ Marco Roth

Some actors wear their roles like clothing," he said. "No matter what part they're playing, you can always easily see who it is beneath the costume."
"It's how drag queens do women, darling," volunteered the elegant Miss X.
[ ... ]
"The really amazing actors strip themselves down to nothing-they make themselves a blank slate, and you can never guess what they're going to look like or act like in their next film because they completely transform themselves."
"It's how transsexuals do women, darling," opined Doris Fish with an arched eyebrow in my direction. ~ Kate Bornstein

Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I've been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop. ~ Roshon Fegan

The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best. ~ Jessica Valenti

People today will have you believing life is a blank slate upon which you can write anything at all
this is poetic, even romantic. Unfortunately, it's also a lie, because life exists in, is bound by, shaped by, controlled by, and functions within a construct. Attempt to function outside that construct, or bend it to our will, or remove it completely, and you throw all of society into chaos. We're seeing that now.
Like it or not, birds don't fly upside down ... and neither can we. ~ Northern Adams

Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will put an end to hard copies, even for someone like me who loves technology and does not fetishize the physical medium of books. ~ Steven Pinker, author of The Lauguage Instinct, How the Mind Works The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. ~ Leah Price

It's only at first sight,when the mind's a blank slate,that you get the purest look.
So I fold the flap back,and write:
Tumbleweeds. ~ Alyson Noel

Having a blank slate is sometimes as daunting as it is exciting. ~ Joe Madureira

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero. ~ Steven Pinker

Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse. ~ Jane Brody

He'd returned to this world with his mind wiped clean. The proverbial blank slate. ~ Haruki Murakami

At dawn, we awake to new dreams, new times, a new life. Each day is a time to start again, a blank slate to fill with daily wishes, daily dreams. Each day is a new life with new opportunity to be whoever we want to be. ~ Avina Celeste

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up. ~ Erik Larson

War is a difficult time for everybody - for soldiers on the front and for the people on the road. War takes away from us everything that we know, as we know it. It gives us a blank slate to re-write our lives and for ink it gives us blood. ~ Preeti Bhonsle

I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want. ~ Tobey Maguire

We are curious creatures, we Taiwanese. Orphans. Eventually, orphans must choose their own names and write their own stories. The beauty of orphanhood is the blank slate. ~ Shawna Yang Ryan

One of the strangest things is the act of creation.
You are faced with a blank slate - a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument.
You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena.
And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form.
It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor's tool onto the surface of the wood or marble.
You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing.
You have glimpsed the divine. ~ Vera Nazarian

If [t]he mind is a system with many parts, then an innate desire is just one component among others. Some faculties may endow us with greed or lust or malice, but others may endow us with sympathy, foresight, selfrespect, a desire for respect from others, and an ability to learn from our own experiences and those of our neighbors. These are physical circuits residing in the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain, not occult powers of a poltergeist, and they have a genetic basis and an evolutionary history no less than the primal urges. It is only the Blank Slate and the Ghost in the Machine that make people think that drives are "biological" but that thinking and decision making are something else. ~ Steven Pinker

Music is the chalk to the blackboard of life. Without it everything is a blank slate ~ Ray Charles

It is so hard for musicians when they step into acting is they're not coming in as a blank slate, they're coming in with a real set idea of who they are, where they're coming from, what their politics are, what their tastes are. ~ Shirley Manson

It's a blank slate here, filled with possibility. ~ Suzanne Young

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is that you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world, but the channels through which you encounter it day-to-day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one. Unlike the libertarian blank slate that appeals to outer space, or even the communes that sought to break with historical time, this "other world" is not a rejection of the one we live in. Rather, it is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is already here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) from the point of view of the world as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and sorrowful contemplation that this entails. ~ Jenny Odell

There's a brief moment when you first wake up, where you have no memories. A blissful blank slate, a happy emptiness. ~ Candace Bushnell

Education is neither writing on a blank slate nor allowing the child's nobility to come into flower. Rather, education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved. ~ Steven Pinker

Simply to render oneself able to understand what other Christian thinkers have themselves come to understand and to more or less felicitously communicate requires that one's mind not be a blank slate but already properly formed, disciplined, and exercised. ~ Gregory B. Sadler

The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we'll all be forgotten. [...] I kinda like the idea. That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experienced during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing I'll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness to do with what you will and then it's given back to the universe again. I'm not religious, but even I can appreciate that that's redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn't scary; it's the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine. ~ Krystal Sutherland

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either. ~ Alison Gopnik

I probably shouldn't say this about all animals, but at least the farm animals that I've hung out with, and even when I go to the zoo usually, they're like a blank slate. I guess that's why I like them. They're puppets, and you can imagine them being anything you want. ~ Kristen Schaal

There is a brief moment when you first wake where you have no memories. An idyllic blank slate. A blissful emptiness. But it doesn't last long. You remember exactly who you are and all the terrible things you've gone through. ~ J.L. Weil

I've always felt a little lost in life, like I never received complete instructions on who I'm supposed to be. Everyone else around me seemed to know exactly who they were. Their lives would fly right by me; their GPS's locked on to destinations while I just sat idling in the street. In high school I never did any extracurricular activities because I couldn't figure out if I was a sports person or a music person. And it was no different in college. I wandered through four different majors, unable to decide who I wanted to be. I just felt like a blank slate.

And if I was a blank slate, Micah York was The Starry Night - authentic, beautiful, perfect. He was my exact antithesis which is what attracted me to him in the first place. He was born knowing exactly who he was and what he was about. His confidence and certainty in himself was an all but tangible element of him. ~ C.K. Walker

The message from too many Democrats and Republicans alike remains that we should not let facts get in the way of our day-dreams. It's so much easier to fantasize about an alternative and ideal world, rather than making the hard and unpopular decisions that are necessary to deal with the complicated and frustrating one in which we live. It is so much easier to imagine that world as a blank slate on which America can draw as it wishes, rather than to recognize that limits on American power, and recalibrate strategy accordingly. If Americans fail to reexamine their fundamental attitudes toward that world, then the risk for the future is that failure in Iraq will make the United States more cautious, but not wiser. ~ John Hulsman

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

At the end of the day, when the sun falls a willing prisoner of the night ... and humans, males and females alike, become submitted to the mistress of the dark, my mind begins to wander and wonder. Looking upwards at a blank slate of concrete, the psyque expresses freely what my subconscious is afraid to give free rein. And there and then, between the play of reality and dreamland, I find my place. I find myself. ~ Eiry Nieves

My future was a blank slate and only I could write on it. ~ Carter Quinn

Twitter is an astounding platform for information, but it's a total blank slate - which means it's an astounding platform for disinformation, too. ~ Rachel Sklar

In The Blank Slate I argued that the modern denial of the dark side of human nature - the doctrine of the Noble Savage - was a reaction against the romantic militarism, hydraulic theories of aggression, and glorification of struggle and strife that had been popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ~ Steven Pinker

The first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for. ~ Natalie Babbitt

It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. ~ Mark Lawrence

The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that's old people's hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that's what you've got, and then think about what you want to see. Not anyone else. ~ David LaChapelle

Foursquare makes maps special. We take maps that are blank and put dots on them to help you figure out what to do. ~ Dennis Crowley

If something happens, you have to realize that you can't just yell at people all the time. ~ Arthur Blank

When someone hears that I've written a book about 1897, I'm usually met with blank stares. And the first thing they say is, 'Was there even an L.A. back then?' A lot of people don't even think there was a city before the movies appeared. That concept of Los Angeles is so strong in the popular imagination that celebrity overrides everything. ~ Liz Goldwyn

If God ever commands the spirit of wisdom to depart from me, well, I reckon that I'll never be able to compose the written word again. Not in music, and not in literature. If there is a blank page before me, it wouldn't matter if my right hand held a thousand dollar ink pen from the House of Montblanc, or an ink pen branded Paper Mate, not one word would be jotted from the ink of either or, and the page would remain blank. ("Primary Blog: The Final Post at the Boutique Domain," 2015) ~ Cat Ellington

A battle is like a deadly sort of dance, Lyss thought. We learn the steps by sparring in the practice yards, by marching up and down the field in the hope that we'll remember the moves when we're distracted by the smell of blood and the shrieks of the wounded anddeath howling toward us from all sides. We go into battle to the cadence of drums and guns, but our dance cards are blank. We have no idea who we'll dance with that day, when death might cut in, and who'll leave the floor alive. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

There's something intimidating, yet exciting about a blank page. ~ Christopher Stocking

Lucifer looked over her shoulder. "What?"

Dahlia cleared her throat. "You stupid bitch, I hate you and love you. Do not wear anything Patience gave you, it's all ugly. I am going to write on every single blank page. Ha-ha! Love, the Faithful slut."

Lucifer scowled. "That person was mean to you."
Dahlia grinned. "No way, Faith was funny. I was the bitch, she was the slut, and Patience was the crack whore. ~ Darcy Town

It seems like it might go on for a while, so Tausolo takes a seat and looks around the sergeant's cubicle. There's not much to see, since the guy just arrived at the WTB, only a blank form tacked to a wall that looks like every other army form in the world.

"Hurt Feelings Report," it is titled. "Whiner's name," it says under that. "Which ear were the words of hurtfulness spoken into?" it says under that. "Is there permanent feeling damage?" "Did you require a 'tissue' for tears?" "Has this resulted in a traumatic brain injury?"

"Reason for filing this report," it says under that. "Mark all that apply." "I am a wimp." "I am a crybaby." "I want my mommy." "I was told that I am not a hero." "Narrative," it says under that. "Tell us in your own sissy words how your feelings were hurt." Finally at the bottom of the form:

We, as the Army, take hurt feelings seriously. If you don't have someone who can give you a hug and make things all better, please let us know and we will promptly dispatch a "hugger" to you ASAP. In the event we are unable to find a "hugger" we will notify the fire department and request that they send fire personnel to your location. If you are in need of supplemental support, upon written request, we will make every reasonable effort to provide you with a "blankey," a "binky" and/or a bottle if you so desire. ~ David Finkel

Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the color of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings. ~ Margaret Atwood

More about Howl? Sophie thought desperately. I have to blacken his name! Her mind was such a blank that for a second it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid! 'Well, he's fickle, careless, selfish, and hysterical,' she said. 'Half the time I think he doesn't care what happens to anyone as long as he's alright
but then I find out how awfully kind he's been to someone. Then I think he's kind just when it suits him
only then I find out he undercharges poor people. I don't know, Your Majesty. He's a mess. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

As Shane threaded between the cars and crossed the lot, all Crystal could do was stare. At the determination in his sexy, powerful stride. At the way those jeans hung on his lean hips and came down around a pair of losely tied brown boots. At the way the breadth of his shoulders pulled the slate blue button-down tight across his chest. Hands in his pockets, he gave her a crooked smile that made her belly flutter and her cheeks heat.
"Hey darlin'," he said as he stepped up on the sidewalk.
"Hi," she said. ~ Laura Kaye

Thanks for the ride.It was really nice of you."
"No worrie. Since I'm down here, maybe I'll swing by Geno's for a cheesesteak." He shook his head. "You saw what was in my fridge."
"I did. Alex..."
I could ask. It would be so easy. A pizza,some of Nonna's fettuccine...
"I had a good time," I told him. Coward, I scolded myself. "I didn't expect to."
"Yeah,well,you can't beat a good raptor attack. Next time before we get started, I'll show you my French comic book collection..." He wiggled his eyebrows at me in perv fashion. "Then we'll work."
"Okay," I agreed. "Sounds good." I started up the sidewalk. Instead of going home,I'd decided to go over to Marino's. Offer to peel garlic or something.Dad would appreciate it.
"Hey,Ella."
I turned. "Yeah?"
"I'll see you tomorrow."
I must have looked blank.
"At the dance," he added.
"Oh.Yeah.See you tomorrow." I turned back toward the restaurant.
"Hey,Ella."
"Yeah?"
"J'ai passe un tres bon moment, aussi." When I just stared at him again, he snorted. "Work it out."
I did,but not before he'd driven away. He'd had a really good time,too. ~ Melissa Jensen

Stepped out into the cold, collar high, under the slate gray sky. The air was smoking and the streets were dry, and I wasn't joking when I said goodbye. ~ Ani DiFranco

My idea of fun is to sit looking at a blank wall in a cottage, making up stories in utter silence. The thought of going back to work in an office is horrendous. ~ Paula Hawkins

If life is a blank canvas and all people are artists, the big challenge we all face may be expressed this way: Will we ultimately produce something approaching a masterpiece, an acceptable but not particularly memorable work of art, or a creation that wouldn't even be purchased at a yard sale? ~ Mardy Grothe

You have to learn which pose works best to enhance your bodies in your lingerie." My blank expression only pissed her off further. "It adds to the seduction process!" Taran sighed when the rest of us exchanged what-the-hell glances."Watch and learn." She folded her arms and leaned over her dresser. Emme jumped when Taran threw out her butt like some sort of weapon. ~ Cecy Robson

How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemonsoda on a muggy night like this around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Rome with someone's arm around me. ~ Andre Aciman

All the world's a stage, but it's also a canvas and a blank sheet of paper. ~ T.H. Brown

People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. ~ Haruki Murakami

Life has been so discouraging that I have forgotten why and how to fantasize, and I feel weak. ~ Jenny Slate

The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like. ~ Frank Zappa

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible. ~ Edna Ferber

Our new millennium began, and it seemed a little bit possible--though surely if we examined the thought too closely, it would evaporate--that a brighter time might be ahead; we have, after all, the round, clean slate of the new number, the row of zeros after the initial digit in 2000. ~ Mark Doty

There are problems and there are children. It is our aim to separate the two. ~ Anthony Horowitz

There's not one type of stand-up, just like there's not one type of woman. ~ Jenny Slate

He kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea. ~ Brian Andreas

Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment is is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling.
"Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished? Where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur. Ourselves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion--no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe sees before him."
~Kruppe, ~ Steven Erikson

How good it felt to be alone, stacking blocks. That's what came to him again, a kind of weight solidifying in his chest: how much he had loved to be alone - to be outside of his own life, a giant, sentient cloud looming over his imaginary city, hovering above it. There was a certain kind of blank omniscience that felt like his true self, at last. ~ Dan Chaon

Water began to drip steadily through the dormer window. Outside, in the treacherous city, a thaw had come, giving the streets the unreliable consistency of wet cardboard. Slow masses of whiteness slid from sloping, grey-slate roofs. The footprints of delivery vans corrugated the slush. First light; and the dawn chorus began, chattering of road-drills, chirrup of burglar alarms, trumpeting of wheeled creatures clashing at corners, the deep whirr of a large olive-green garbage eater, screaming radio-voices from a wooden painter's cradle clinging to the upper storey of a Free House, roar of the great wakening juggernauts rushing awesomely down this long but narrow pathway. From beneath the earth came tremors denoting the passage of huge subterranean worms that devoured and regurgitated human beings, and from the skies the thrum of choppers and the screech of higher, gleaming birds. ~ Salman Rushdie

They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice. ~ Malcolm X

The thick, stagnant air reeked of perfume, cigarettes, and exhaust. Everyone was barefaced, wanting to flaunt their features instead of hiding beneath blank masks. To be able to flirt with their lips, to be able to kiss. But I wasn't fooled by the dark - the air was still poisonous. Even if we couldn't see the brown haze, it smothered our city lit in neon. ~ Cindy Pon

That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. ~ Peggy McIntosh

Of course, when you remember your life, you never remember anything in a chronological way. You always have pieces of memories, and some of these memories are full of details and very colorful. Some of them you just see the action and it's completely blank. ~ Marjane Satrapi

In 2012, I received a phone call from the family of Arsala Rahmani, the Afghan senator with whom I'd become friendly. That morning, a gunman had pulled up alongside Rahmani's vehicle, idling in a crowded intersection, and shot him point blank. ~ Anand Gopal

On Second Street, corner of Norris Alley, was a commodious house, known as the Slate-roof House, and built before 1700 by James Porteus for Samuel Carpenter, who sold it to Penn. ~ J. Thomas Scharf