If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.
Elizabeth Bowen

If I found a cure for a huge disease, while I was hobbling up onstage to accept the Nobel Prize they'd be playing the theme song from 'Three's Company'.
John Ritter

If it awakens in us as a whole how important that is - the theme of how conquest and ambition are meaningless without contribution - I think then as a society we're in better shape. I hope people are inspired to be the best.
Rob Morrow

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
Pablo Picasso

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.
Richard Russo

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.
Dave Van Ronk

If you read my books, especially the Star Trek books and the Quest for Tomorrow books, you'll see in them the core theme of the basic humanistic questions that Star Trek asked.
William Shatner

In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.
Nicholas Sparks

In Ski Party we are reading up on how to have fun without sex. That was the theme of every AIP picture!
Dwayne Hickman

In this case they're doctors. But having passion for your work and to take risks in order to better human kind. That's a pretty big theme. It's pretty inspiring.
Mary Stuart Masterson

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
William Cowper

It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion is for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.
Miriam Makeba

It was by design that we mostly used pictures that you could not necessarily see what was going on, and that didn't really focus in on the band, but instead focused in on a theme.
Mike McCready

It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.
John Lithgow

It's about giving the people what they want. So many people have told me that they've made love to my records so what I've delivered this time is an album about sex. Pretty much every song has that theme. Straight no chasers, it's booty music!
Tyrese Gibson

It's all about theme and development anyway. That's what music is about.
John Otto

It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.
Winona Ryder

It's based around a Jewish family but it really is a universal theme about getting along and coming along.
Jami Gertz

It's like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling.
David Strathairn

Judaism is an intellectually based religion, and the single most important theme is that of study.
Norman Lamm