Solving A Puzzle Quotes

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. ~ Criss Jami

But I was beginning to feel like it all fit together, the same way everything in the bowl ends up in the bisquits, as Amma would say. ~ Kami Garcia

I have a really hard time connecting to music that doesn't feel like I'm somehow solving a puzzle that applies to my life. ~ Andrew McMahon

The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction. ~ William Zinsser

The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. Many of the greatest scientific minds have devoted all of their professional attention to demanding puzzles of this sort. On most occasions any particular field of specialization offers nothing else to do, a fact that makes it no less fascinating to the proper sort of addict. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle. ~ Christopher Bollen

Winston Breen was solving a puzzle, but then Winston Breen was always solving a puzzle. ~ Eric Berlin

Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine into high drama. ~ Iris Johansen

Devising a mechanism is a lot like solving a puzzle - and gives you the same kind of kick. ~ Eric Maskin

Your life is like a mosaic, a puzzle. You have to figure out where the pieces go and put them together for yourself. ~ Maria Shriver

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. ~ John Howard Griffin

Cole turned and went down the stairs to wait for the inevitable. Soon Blake would descend the stairs and into madness.
But Blake had only taken his favorite parts from Cole's little speech. Livia had tried to find him. Livia needed him to keep her safe. Blake turned to face the organ. The keys had danced mockingly like disjointed puzzle pieces before, but now…Now they waited obediently. His hands knew them. His hands could sweep them together and create.
So he did.
He leapt right over the Ave Maria as if Livia held his hand to help him jump.
No more Ave Maria.
His hands flew over the organ, composing, painting, revealing all that was within him. Blake would show Livia all he had inside for her. If she was looking for him, she didn't hate him. If she was looking for him, he was allowed to love her.
Even if Cole was right and Blake didn't have the common sense to be with her, he could watch her, like a knight and his queen. He could protect her so she never faced anyone like Dentist again.
Blake was allowed to love Livia. And he did.
Blake loves Livia. ~ Debra Anastasia

Being a visionary leader is not about giving speeches and inspiring the troops. How I spend my day is pretty much the same as how any executive spends his day. Being a visionary leader is about solving day-to-day problems with my vision in mind. ~ Bill O'Brien

God's will is like a jigsaw puzzle until you put all the pieces together, you won't be able to see the whole picture. ~ Danny L. Deaube

I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Oscore is my favorite model," he says. "He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle. ~ Jandy Nelson

When I took over as chair of the fashion program, I was horrified that only the faculty member was allowed to speak in a critique. I'm talking about perfectly nurturing teachers. But the rule was there would be no call of hands for students to contribute their feedback. It was embedded in the department's culture. That was alarming to me. When I was teaching, I was the least important person in the room as far as I was concerned
my students' points of view mattered most. I wanted to learn who they were and teach them to respect one another's perspectives.
I would start off by saying something like, I am having trouble understanding how this work solves the problem at hand. Here are some things about the work that I appreciate: X, Y, Z. But I see these virtues independent of the problem we're solving. ~ Tim Gunn

It is often a puzzle for foreigners why the United States has such a dismal performance when it comes to murder, guns, and mental illness, all features of American life that, when compared to most of the other wealthy countries, are so awful they do not require further documentation. You might wonder how those bad results square with America's relatively strong performances on most social capital indices, such as trust, cooperation, and charitable philanthropy; on philanthropy, we even rate as the global number one. The truth is that those positive and negative facets are two sides of the same coin: Cooperation is very often furthered by segregating those who do not fit in. That creates some superclusters of cooperation among the quality cooperators and a fair amount of chaos and dysfunctionality elsewhere. ~ Tyler Cowen

The same solution--that Easter Island was once part of a much larger landmass--would also explain another, very different puzzle, namely the so-called Rongo Rongo script. It is unprecedented in human history for a sophisticated fully developed writing system to be invented and put into use by a small, isolated island community. Yet Easter Island does have its own script, examples of which, mostly incised on wooden boards, copies of copies of copies of much older lost originals, were collected in the nineteenth century and have found their way into a number of museums around the world. None remain on Easter Island itself and even in the period when they were collected no native Easter Islanders were able to read them. ~ Graham Hancock

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it 'philanthropy' is extremely short-sighted and unfortunately, extremely pervasive. ~ Naveen Jain

We are at a critical point where rapid change is forcing us to look not just to new ways of solving problems but to new problems to solve. ~ Tim Brown

A [reformed] vampire ... mostly tries to make reparation for his previous evil by doing good deeds-most commonly, apparently, going into the crime solving business. ~ Vivian Vande Velde

Criminal investigation has been loosely compared to many things, including the putting together of a jigsaw puzzle. It is seldom that simple. The pieces of such a puzzle are of a fixed shape, immutable. Men and women change shape when touched. ~ Frances Lockridge

I admire John Boehner greatly. He's a great public servant. I think people are going to miss him in the long run because he's a person that is focused on solving problems. ~ Jeb Bush

Solving problems is a practical skill like, let us say, swimming. We acquire any practical skill by imitation and practice. Trying to swim, you imitate what other people do with their hands and feet to keep their heads above water, and, finally, you learn to swim by practicing swimming. Trying to solve problems, you have to observe and to imitate what other people do when solving problems, and, finally, you learn to do problems by doing them. ~ George Polya

Simply put, a woman's brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won't solve our issues, though, it won't make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating. ~ Katty Kay

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible - to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Love is ease, love is comfort, love is support and respect. Love is not punishing or controlling. Love lets you grow and breathe. Love's passion is only good passion
swirling-leaves-on-a-fall-day passion, a-sky-full-of-magnificent-stars passion
not angst and anxiety. Love is not hurt and harm. Love is never unsafe. Love is sleeping like puzzle pieces. It's your own garden you protect; it's a field of wildflowers you move about in both freely and together. ~ Deb Caletti

The mind is a wonderful problem-solving machine without which there exists not even a single problem. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When I open the door, Baz is wheeling an old-fashioned chalkboard in front of our beds.
"Where did that come from?" I ask.
"A classroom."
"Yeah, but how did it get up here?"
"It flew."
"No," I say, "seriously."
He rolls his eyes. "I Up, up and away-ed it. It wasn't much work."
"Why?"
"Because we're solving a mystery, Snow. I like to organize my thoughts."
"Is this how you normally plot my downfall?"
"Yes. With multicoloured pieces of chalk. Stop complaining." He opens up his book bag and takes out a few apples and things wrapped in greaseproof paper. "Eat," he says, throwing one at me.
It's a bacon roll. He's also got a pot of tea.
"What's all this?" I say.
"Tea, obviously. I know you can't function unless you're stuffing yourself."
I unwrap the roll and decide to take a bite. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me," he says. "It sounds wrong."
"Not as wrong as you bringing me bacon butties."
"Fine, you're welcome - when's Bunce getting here?"
"Why would she?"
"Because you do everything together, don't you? When you said you'd help, I was counting on you bringing your smarter half. ~ Rainbow Rowell

It's like I'm trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, and everyone is hiding the pieces from me. ~ Sarah Jio

I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt. ~ James McBride

A cat is like a puzzle with no solution. ~ Anne Campbell

Life must be lived forward but only makes sense by looking backward. Only in retrospect do the pieces of the puzzle connect, revealing an intelligently orchestrated evolution. Our journey through life is in a way like walking blindfolded. ~ Dorit Brauer

Games are never over because you think them so! Which is why I like you. Are you doing what you want to do...or are you simply another piece of a darkened puzzle? Your own actions predetermined by powers higher than yourself? ~ LaTorre Mays

Last night is like a puzzle - only not put together: all the pieces are scattered everywhere and some are missing. I wish my heart wouldn't beat so fast. ~ Jennifer Niven

Memo to the Male Species: Girls like men who know what they want and go after it, not boys who twiddle their thumbs and make it a puzzle we girls have to solve. Because guys, we aren't going to solve that riddle. Hate to break it to ya! ~ Emily McKee

Decision making and problem solving are not the same. To solve a problem, one needs to find a solution. To make a decision, one needs to make a choice. ~ Michael J. Marx

Love - he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be. ~ Paz Marquez Benitez

But in the meantime, as a temporary measure, I hold what I call the doctrine of the jig-saw puzzle. That is: this remarkable occurrence, and that, and the other may be, and usually are, of no significance. Coincidence and chance and unsearchable causes will now and again make clouds that are undeniable fiery dragons, and potatoes that resemble eminent statesmen exactly and minutely in every feature, and rocks that are like eagles and lions. All this is nothing; it is when you get your set of odd shapes and find that they fit into one another, and at last that they are but parts of a large design; it is then that research grows interesting and indeed amazing, it is then that one queer form confirms the other, that the whole plan displayed justifies, corroborates, explains each separate piece. ~ Arthur Machen

Viviane considered herself a rational woman.She was a Virgo. She was used to solving problems , even if it meant she spent far too much time mulling things over in the bathtub. This didn't make any sense; when she tried to envision her life without Jack or his without her , all she could think about were platypuses.What was a platypus but a kind of duck with fur?The whole idea of it was ridiculous and wrong. ~ Leslye Walton

This was it, the big moment: the corpse of his chief enemy, the ruins of his creator, the body of his dead father; the great weight of all that was unsaid and would never have been said; the pressure to say it now, when there was nobody to hear, and to speak also on his father's behalf, in an act of self-division that might fissure the world and turn his body into a jigsaw puzzle. This was it. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited?

Norman Spinrad: I think it's a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov's, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn't. The supposed dichotomy between "literary fiction" and "popular fiction" is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn't want to be "popular," meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were "serious"?

I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. "Genre," if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. "Westerns" must be set in the Old West. "Mysteries" must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. "Nurse Novels" must have a nurse. And so forth.

In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are "genres." They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of "genre" in an absolute literary sense. ~ Norman Spinrad

You can't expect other people to fix your problems if you don't at least try to fix them yourself first. [...] The solving part should always start with you.
This is hard for a lot of people, but not because they are lazy, or they want to make excuses, or they're selfish. No, i think it's because too many people aren't selfish enough. They don't put themselves first, and as result, when things get bad in their lives, they have no idea what to do because it feels like it's happening to somebody else. Or worse, they get blindsided by the problems because they never saw them coming. ~ Glozell Green

Digger stood and ambled toward the balcony. "This explains so much. I feel like I've just finished a crossword puzzle."
"How do you know what that feels like?" Kelly asked ~ Abigail Roux

The life could be unique, incrediable, awesome, irreplaceable and gorgeous. Without "Easy-Peasy", by putting all people to solve puzzles for example. Somebody asks you a question like "Who is Janne WillDrog?" you answer like that "Never had a future, never went to library, never had a chance to be part of the White House. The White Costumed guy knows the answer!" - The find answer you must solve the riddle and to assemble the puzzle! ~ Deyth Banger

If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. ~ Margaret Atwood

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man. ~ James Whistler

Life is a series of puzzles; all you have to do is solve the puzzles. ~ Sam Owen

...somewhere in that intersection of broken hearts and shattered souls... broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What's more, maybe our broken pieces don't fit us... maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend you and your pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me, but until we've been broken we don't have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value of being broken. Maybe...somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged, painful pieces of themselves and they can't get whole without you... Maybe love, the real kind, the kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up the bag of you... And what's more, they don't cost you anything. They're free. I paid for them in the breaking... And because you're desperate, and you've tried most everything else, you empty my bag across the floor... and...find the one piece you've been missing... And when you insert that piece into the puzzle that had become you, it stops the hemorrhage, and for the first time in maybe your whole life, the wound starts to heal. ~ Charles Martin

I sat belonely

I sat belonely down a tree,
humbled fat and small.
A little lady sing to me
I couldn't see at all.

I'm looking up and at the sky,
to find such wondrous voice.
Puzzly puzzle, wonder why,
I hear but have no choice.

'Speak up, come forth, you ravel me',
I potty menthol shout.
'I know you hiddy by this tree'.
But still she won't come out.

Such softly singing lulled me sleep,
an hour or two or so
I wakeny slow and took a peep
and still no lady show.

Then suddy on a little twig
I thought I see a sight,
A tiny little tiny pig,
that sing with all it's might.

'I thought you were a lady'.
I giggle, - well I may,
To my suprise the lady,
got up - and flew away. ~ John Lennon

Effective leaders....always rise to a challenge. That's one of the things that separates winners from whiners.....Walton rose above it by solving his problems with creativity and tenacity.


Anyone who expects the road to be easy will continually find himself in trouble. ~ John C. Maxwell

In this case, Jane and Maura don't always agree on how to go about solving something. They both are very different in their approach and, a lot of times, that can lead to potential conflict, and then a debate in figuring out who and what is the right way to do it. ~ Sasha Alexander

I love Memphis, I guess you could say, in the way that you love a brother even if he does sometimes puzzle and sadden and frustrate you. Say what you want about it, it's an authentic place. I was born and raised in Memphis, and no matter where I go, Memphis belongs to me, and I to it. ~ Hampton Sides

I came to view the world as a word puzzle and, with no special aptitude I can name, fixed on the whys and wherefores of language from my earliest days. Song lyrics. Signs. The stories read in first and second grades. My parents almost always read to us at bedtime. Poems by Whittier. Scenes from Oliver Twist. Kidnapped. Treasure Island. The names alone intrigued me. Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney. The name Balfour sounded the knell of the romantic. Robinson Crusoe. I loved to hear read the exploits of Natty Bumppo. Authors had an aura of the godlike to me. The Latin prayers fascinated me as an altar boy. I can still recall carved names on buildings I saw from the MTA train when I was a youngster. Who can explain why? Words were magic to me. I once inadvisably glued my finger and thumb together at the Magoun Library in fourth grade trying to amuse a pretty little girl on whom I had a crush, and when the librarian came over angrily to inquire what the problem was and I pointed with a shrug and replied, "Mucilage" - a word that always made me laugh - she very coldly stated, "You are more to be pitied than censured. ~ Alexander Theroux