Updike, I think, has never had an unpublished thought. And he's got an ability to put it in very lapidary prose. But there's eighty percent absolute dreck, and twenty percent priceless stuff. And you just have to wade through so much purple gorgeous empty writing to get to anything that's got any kind of heartbeat in it.
--
David Foster Wallace, as quoted in Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself : A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (2010) by David Lipsky, pp. 9293John Updike
Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.
Billy Wilder
It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I cant imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.
Douglas Coupland
The average person puts about 25 percent of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50 percent of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100 percent.
Andrew Carnegie
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
Matsuo Basho
John Cage, composer, painter, and all-round thinker and cultural catalyst, said that if you introduce twenty percent of novelty into any artwork, watch out -- you are going to lose eighty percent of your audience at once. He said you would lose them for fifteen years. Cage was interested in fifteen-year cycles. But he was hopelessly optimistic. The general appreciation, for example, of Western painting has got stuck around Impressionism, and that was 130 years ago, not fifteen years ago.
Peter Greenaway
Updike, John
Upham, Thomas Cogswell
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z