Jacques Barzun Quotes

Practice puts brains in your muscles.

The body has a dimension of simulation. The learning process, for instance: when one learns how to drive a car or a van, once in the van, one feels completely lost. But then, once you have learnt how to drive, the whole van is in your body. It is integrated into your body.

It took me 10 years to realize that I don't know 'em, 10 years to realize that it's possible to learn them, then another 10 years to learn how to do things.

It's not like learning how to hit a curve ball in baseball.

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven't had a lesson since.

Seasonal change in Los Angeles is often a very subtle thing. It's not as if we finally stop having to shovel the snow out of our driveways and can put our parkas back in the closet.

Repeating my mechanics was difficult. I was always trying to do something different to make it click.

Sometimes it's harder to untrain somebody with dance experience than it is to teach somebody with a new skill.

You know, playing football for me is just like riding a bike.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

To become really good at anything, you have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat, until the technique becomes intuitive.

But as we went on, and you keep practicing and rehearsing more and more fight scenes, it clicks and you just get it. It's almost like a soccer game. If you take enough shots on target, one of them is going to go in. As soon as it does, something happens and it just registers. I found it a lot easier after that, which was about three-quarters of the way through the shoot.

Seventy-five years. That's how much time you get if you're lucky. Seventy-five years. Seventy-five winters, seventy-five springtimes, seventy-five summers, and seventy-five autumns. When you look at it like that, it's not a lot of time, is it? Don't waste them. Get your head out of the rat race and forget about the superficial things that pre-occupy your existence and get back to what's important now.

It's just not enough time on set. That's my favorite time. I live for that time on set. I feel like that's when I'm stretching and flexing my muscles and learning how to direct better.

As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions. I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.

Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.

When you do something young enough and you train for it, it just becomes a part of you.

If I don't know how to swim and two weeks later I know how to swim, I know how to swim.

... keep practicing. After a great deal of practice, we no longer think about all the necessary movements we must make; they become part of our existence. Before reaching that stage, however, you must practice and repeat. And if that's not enough, you must practice and repeat some more.

The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning.

The World requires at least ten years to understand a new idea, however important or simple it may be.

I am sure that few successful men are so-called 'natural geniuses.'