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21 " What one should add here is that self-consciousness is itself unconscious: we are not aware of the point of our self-consciousness. If ever there was a critic of the fetishizing effect of fascinating and dazzling " leitmotifs" , it is Adorno: in his devastating analysis of Wagner, he tries to demonstrate how Wagnerian leitmotifs serve as fetishized elements of easy recognition and thus constitute a kind of inner-structural commodification of his music. It is then a supreme irony that traces of this same fetishizing procedure can be found in Adorno's own writings. Many of his provocative one-liners do effectively capture a profound insight or at least touch on a crucial point (for example: " Nothing is more true in pscyhoanalysis than its exaggeration" ); however, more often than his partisans are ready to admit, Adorno gets caught up in his own game, infatuated with his own ability to produce dazzlingly " effective" paradoxical aphorisms at the expense of theoretical substance (recall the famous line from Dialectic of Englightment on how Hollywood's ideological maniuplation of social reality realized Kant's idea of the transcendental constitution of reality). In such cases where the dazzling " effect" of the unexpected short-circuit (here between Hollywood cinema and Kantian ontology) effectively overshadows the theoretical line of argumentation, the brilliant paradox works precisely in the same manner as the Wagnerian leitmotif: instead of serving as a nodal point in the complex network of structural mediation, it generates idiotic pleasure by focusing attention on itself. This unintended self-reflexivity is something of which Adorno undoubtedly was not aware: his critique of the Wagnerian leitmotif was an allegorical critique of his own writing. Is this not an exemplary case of his unconscious reflexivity of thinking? When criticizing his opponent Wagner, Adorno effectively deploys a critical allegory of his own writing - in Hegelese, the truth of his relation to the Other is a self-relation. "
22 " Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her. "
― Cecelia Ahern , One Hundred Names
23 " Smiling, she went for his throat and almost had him, when—using a move that was all sorts of illegal—he flipped her again so her front pressed into the leaf-laden ground, her wrists still locked in his iron grip and pinned above her head. “Cheater.” “So says the woman who tried to kick my balls into my throat,” he pointed out, even as he licked the salt off the skin of her neck in a lazy and highly provocative move. "
― Nalini Singh , Branded by Fire (Psy-Changeling, #6)
24 " She [Nana] listened to his [Steiner's] propositions, turning them down every time with a shake of the head and that provocative laughter which is peculiar to full-bodied blondes. "
― Émile Zola , Nana
25 " Goddess of immemorable cloudy veils, reveal your magickal powers so we may re-attune our psyches to your multi-dimensional realities and thereby draw your power to heal this worldly habitat and return it to the provocative Sisterhood of Your Milky Way. "
― Lady Svetlana
26 " Success requires, a human touch, intuitive powers and provocative thinking processes "
― Julian Pencilliah
27 " The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty. "
28 " Over the course of my career, I have come to accept that some of my more provocative work courts controversy, and as an artist, I value the discourse that arises from this. I can only hope for this discourse to be informed by fact, so that whether you love my work or hate it, you give it, and me, the benefit of the truth. "
29 " So there's nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who's cool hates - and then making it cool. "
30 " To really be tortured by a song, it needs to be more than just something you don't like or don't get; it has to make your skin crawl by getting under it. Strangely, that last clause could describe provocative or daring music, as well. "
31 " A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?' We must always consider the person. "