#226 | 12 Great Quotes from 2024 + What to Expect in 2025
Quick SUMMARY:
In this year-end episode, Douglas Vigliotti reflects on 12 notable quotes from various books throughout 2024, sharing one for each month. He announces changes to the podcast, including a new segment called "Movie or Novel?" Vigliotti discusses the nature of adaptations and emphasizes the importance of reading. The episode serves as a wrap-up for the year, offering inspiration and insights for listeners as they look forward to 2025!
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What’s Inside THE EPISODE?
As we approach the end of 2024, Douglas Vigliotti, the host of the "Books for Men" podcast, takes a moment to reflect on the past year and share his vision for 2025. This episode is a treasure trove of literary wisdom, featuring notable quotes from various books, insights into upcoming changes to the podcast, and a sneak peek into his new book, "Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story." Let's delve into the key themes and actionable advice from this episode.
Introduction: A Year of Literary Exploration
Douglas Vigliotti opens the episode by expressing his gratitude to listeners for their support throughout 2024. He wishes everyone happy holidays and sets the stage for a reflective and forward-looking discussion. The episode is structured around notable quotes from books he read over the year, each offering a unique perspective on life, storytelling, and personal growth.
Promoting "Aristotle for Novelists"
Before diving into the quotes, Vigliotti promotes his new book, "Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story." He encourages listeners to visit the book's website, where they can access additional resources, including a free ten-question assessment to help determine if their story aligns with Aristotelian principles. This book is a must-read for aspiring novelists and storytellers looking to deepen their understanding of narrative structure.
Changes to the Podcast in 2025
Vigliotti acknowledges that he had previously promised to incorporate interviews into the podcast but admits that he struggled to find the time and energy to execute this plan effectively. Instead, he announces a new segment titled "Movie or Novel," where he will analyze a book and its film adaptation, discussing which version he believes is superior and why. This segment aims to explore the nuances of adaptations and the tension between literary integrity and commercial success.
Notable Quotes from 2024
Vigliotti shares one notable quote for each month of 2024, offering his reflections on their significance. Let's break down each quote and the valuable insights they provide:
January: "Facts can be bent to conform to any thesis." - James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Insight: This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing how narratives can be shaped by selective presentation of facts. In today's information landscape, it's crucial to critically evaluate the sources and context of the information we consume.
February: "The world is not a collection of things; it is a collection of events." - Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
Insight: Life and storytelling are dynamic processes. Instead of viewing things as static, we should appreciate the unfolding of events and the interconnectedness of experiences.
March: "Memories are unreliable, and so are history books, but truth can be found in both." - George Pelecanos, Owning Up
Insight: Truth is complex and multifaceted. By examining multiple perspectives, we can gain a deeper understanding of reality and the human experience.
April: "Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance." - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Insight: This motivational quote reminds us to take action without overthinking. Embrace the process and trust in your abilities.
May: "It is hopelessness, even more than pain, that crushes the soul." - William Styron, Darkness Visible
Insight: Hope is essential for our well-being. Cultivating hope can help us navigate difficult times and maintain a positive outlook on life.
June: "If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information." - Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci
Insight: Curiosity and open-mindedness are key to personal growth. Be willing to adapt and change your perspective based on new information.
July: "Life changes in an instant. The ordinary instant." - Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Insight: This quote highlights the unpredictability of life. Embrace the present moment and be prepared for both positive and negative changes.
August: "More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm." - Eknath Easwaran, The Dhammapada
Insight: Mental discipline and self-control are crucial for personal development. An undisciplined mind can lead to self-sabotage and hinder our progress.
September: "Fixation is the way of death; fluidity is the way of life." - Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Insight: Adaptability is essential for success. Being flexible and open to change allows us to navigate life's challenges more effectively.
October: "This group that is judging you is not real; you invented it to make yourself feel less alone." - David Mamet, True and False
Insight: The judgment we perceive from others is often self-imposed. In the age of social media, it's important to recognize and challenge these self-created narratives.
November: "Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill." - Aristotle, Poetics
Insight: Resolving complex narratives effectively is a significant challenge for writers. Focus on crafting satisfying conclusions that honor the story's development.
December: "How do you know what you're going to do until you do it? The answer is, you don't." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Insight: Action is more significant than intention. Embrace uncertainty and take steps towards your goals, even if the outcome is unknown.
Looking Ahead to 2025
Vigliotti wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to explore the quotes further by revisiting the corresponding episodes. He thanks them for their support and reminds them to check out his book, "Aristotle for Novelists," available on its dedicated website. He emphasizes the importance of subscribing to the podcast and leaving ratings to help reach a wider audience, ultimately aiming to inspire more men to read.
For those interested in connecting with him, he provides his website DouglasVigliotti.com and Instagram handle @DouglasVigliotti as points of contact. This episode serves as a thoughtful conclusion to the year, blending reflections on literature with personal insights and a forward-looking perspective on the podcast's evolution.
Actionable Takeaways
Critical Evaluation: Always critically evaluate the sources and context of the information you consume.
Embrace Change: Be open to changing your perspective based on new information.
Take Action: Don't overthink; take action and trust in your abilities.
Cultivate Hope: Maintain hope even in difficult times to navigate challenges effectively.
Mental Discipline: Practice mental discipline and self-control to avoid self-sabotage.
Adaptability: Stay flexible and open to change to handle life's unpredictability.
Challenge Self-Judgment: Recognize and challenge self-imposed narratives of judgment.
Craft Satisfying Conclusions: Focus on resolving narratives effectively in your storytelling.
Embrace Uncertainty: Take steps towards your goals, even if the outcome is unknown.
By incorporating these insights and actionable advice into your life, you can navigate the complexities of the modern world with greater clarity and purpose. Here's to a year of growth, learning, and literary exploration in 2025!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so. First things first, I want to wish everybody out there happy holidays. This will actually be the final episode of 2024, so thank you so much for listening and supporting the show throughout the year. I truly appreciate your listenership. So in this episode, I'm going to be sharing some of the great quotes from 2024. I'm going to do one from each month of the year. So there will be 12, as I just mentioned. And I'm also going to share a little bit about what to expect in 2025, as I will be making a few minor changes. Some I'm pretty excited about, others I'm still sifting through, but I will get into all of that momentarily. First, I wanted to remind you that I have a new book out called Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story. And if you're interested in that, I highly suggest going over to AristotleforNovelists.com.
01:13 - The link will be in the show notes. In addition to just general information about the book, like the back cover copy, what other people have said about it, where you can buy it, what retailers, all that stuff. There's also a nifty little resource that I designed to go along with it. That is a ten-question assessment that someone can download for free on that website and determine if they have a working story based on Aristotelian principles. Again, that's at Aristotle for novelists.com. And if you're one of those people who prefer to learn about the book in a little bit more of an off-the-cuff manner, maybe in an interview format. There was a fun one that came out since my last recording with Jonathan Small on his podcast. Right about now, we cover a wide range of topics. I had a ton of fun in the conversation and for quick access that link will be in the show notes. All right, so now let me turn to the bulk of the episode today, and I'm going to go in reverse.
02:13 - I guess I'm going to start with what to expect in 2025 and then move into the 12 quotes from 2024. So the first thing I want to just apologize for, I guess, is last year I promised that there would be interviews on the podcast and I was going to start incorporating those. And I'll be honest, I just never pulled the trigger, mostly because it requires a lot of heavy lifting on my end to conduct the interviews in the way that I would want to conduct them, and I just don't have the bandwidth to add it into my current workflow. In addition to this podcast, I write a lot much of the work that I have written over the last few years you've yet to see. Aristotle for novelist novelists came out. But I have a couple novels that are finished, and I'm trying to figure out the best direction to go with them right now. And I'm also working on another novel, so I am pretty tapped out when it comes to adding new things to the workflow. But with that being said, there are things that I want to continue to do and build with this specifically.
03:27 - So I went back and forth on whether or not I should continue doing the recap episodes at the end of every month for the time being, for the first few months of the year. Anyway, I am going to be forgoing them. However, there will be a new episode format in its slot, one that I think you are going to enjoy, and it's called Movie or Novel, where I discuss one book and its novel adaptation, concluding which I like better and for what reason, so contrary to most People's opinions. I do believe that there are plenty of examples where the movie is actually better than the novel. And let me clarify this by saying the movie is better at being a movie than the novel is at being a novel. I always think that the source material should hold a higher weight than the adaptation because without it you wouldn't have it. But if we are assessing things with a degree of nuance, there is an interpretation of a story which, if you've read Aristotle for a novelist, you know that I look at story and writing or story and the telling of that story as two completely different things.
04:51 - Therefore, you can tell the story on the screen through imagery, music, cutting, and all of the various things that filmmakers have at their disposal to interpret a novel. Or you could write it and have the story on the page. We both know there are plenty of examples of bad interpretations, ones that really fall short a lot of times. Sadly, it's a commercial endeavor because a successful book already has a large audience, so it makes sense to do an adaptation of it, even if it's not very good. And I think that there are plenty of examples of that. I mean, you could read countless authors who hate the cinematic interpretation of their work. I think Hemingway has a funny quote where he says, when you get to Hollywood, just throw the book over the fence and take the money. Run. Never look at it again. Of course, I'm paraphrasing him. Maybe I could find the quote and throw it in the show notes for anybody who is interested. But again, of course, I believe that there are tons of good interpretations, and I've shared many of them on this podcast before, whether it was “Fight Club” or “Mystic River” or “The Godfather”.
06:06 - And then there were other books that I shared on this podcast where it was the inverse, right? So they weren't so good. Things like “The Great Gatsby” or “The Road”, “The Sun Also Rises”, Ernest Hemingway, “The Stranger”, and “Lolita”, all had adaptations that weren't nearly as good, at least in my opinion, then the actual novels. Having said that, let's move on. I will share much more about this topic in the upcoming segment on the podcast, movie, or novel. You can expect that at the end of each month, replacing the recap episodes, at least for the time being. And I will just say that I am starting to noodle on adding some things to the actual workflow for the podcast. I know I just talked about how I don't have the bandwidth, and that is definitely something that I am always weighing. The pluses and minuses and the tradeoffs that are associated with adding more. One of those things is short form video. I know, and I am saying the same thing in my head and my really going to jump into that world.
07:11 - But like anything, the only way to find out is to test it. Ultimately, it adds to the mission of what I am doing here, which is to inspire more men to read, and it doesn't detract too much from other aspects of my life and creative endeavors writing, namely what I am doing. I will consider adding it. All right, so now let's pivot into the 12 great quotes from 2020. The January quote that I selected is from the crime novel “American Tabloid” by James Ellroy. And its, “Facts can be bent to conform to any thesis.” And for me, this is just a really important quote to remember, especially in the times that we are living in facts and data. All of that stuff, well, anecdotally might be true and can be bent to form any story or any narrative. And I think we see this a lot in our current culture. February's quote is from “The Order of Time” by Carlo Rovelli. “The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.”
08:26 - I chose this quote because I think it's easy to lose perspective on this idea and the core nature of this idea. We tend to look at things as static, but in reality, there are things that happened well before you view that thing that caused that thing to happen, and the thing that you are doing today is going to cause the next thing to happen. Life unfolds in this way, and so do stories for that matter. And this is something that I talk about in “Aristotle for Novelists”, and it's something that Aristotle is pretty adamant about. The March quote comes from the book “Owning Up” by George Pelecanos, which is really an episodic or four short novellas all around one central theme. And in that, there's a great quote that I love that says, “Memories are unreliable and so are history books, but truth could be found in both.” And that's almost like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. But even that is oversimplifying it. So I think it's best you probably just think about it a little bit more.
09:34 - And I move on to April's quote from my favorite book on writing, which is “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott, and she writes, “Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” I think this is a great reminder for anybody who wants to do anything. Stop overanalyzing. The, is it perfect? Is it not perfect? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong and just dance the best imagery for just doing it? Man, stop thinking about it. Go for it. May's quote came from a really, really heartfelt book, “Darkness Visible” by William Styron, a memoir on madness, and he writes, “It is hopelessness, even more than pain that crushes the soul.” For me, this is just an illumination of the essential nature of hope in our lives and always having something to hope for. But it's nobody's responsibility, other than your own, to cultivate and create a sense of hope in your life based on the things that you do or perhaps create.
10:49 - June's quote comes from the excellent biography “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson, and he writes, “If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information. So, yes, Leonardo was incessant about curiosity and open-mindedness.” And you will not hear me squabble with that idea. It is one that I will scream from mountaintops, hopefully battling ages, desire to beat it out of you and providing a little discomfort. But it's still something that I feel is worth doing. Follow that curiosity. Be open-minded. It might be the most important thing for you as you get older. July's quote comes from the touching memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion, and she writes something that is painfully or hopefully true. Depending on how you look at it. “Life changes in an instant. The ordinary instant.” A quote that I just love. And I think, as I alluded just seconds ago, you can look at this positively or negatively, I hope that you will look at it positively, but it definitely has its relevance in the sad realm as well, because ultimately it is true.
12:21 - It is a mere moment that can change our lives, for better or worse. August's quote comes from the foundational Buddhist text, “The Dhammapada”, translated by Eknath Easwaran. More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm.” Ultimately, life begins and ends in your mind. It is how we process the world. It is how we handle everything in our lives. So doing things that promote a healthier mind are in our best interests. Like this quote reminds you nothing external, as dangerous and hateful as it may be, and I can think of plenty of examples, will do greater harm to you than a mind that cannot control itself. And I just love that musing. September’s quote came from “The Book of Five Rings” by Miyamoto Musashi, a legendary Japanese samurai or swordsman who supposedly never lost a battle, and this is his text on the nature of swordsmanship and his school of thought. He writes, “Fixation is the way of death, fluidity is the way of life.” So I can't help but think about something I shared with you just moments ago, I was talking about “The Order of Time” and Carlo Rovelli, and how things are not static, and we have a tendency to look at them as static.
13:56 - This quote reminds us that when you begin to view the world through that fixed way, it is actually harming you. The healthier way is to look at life through fluidity, movement, one thing causing the next thing, because this is the essential nature of life, or as much of Eastern philosophy reminds us, everything in life is temporary, the good and the bad. You must move with life, not against it. October's quote is from the acting guide “True and False” by David Mamet, and he writes, “This group that is judging you is not real; you invented it to make yourself feel less alone.” Man, this quote is so heavy. You might wonder why I featured an acting guide on this podcast. And that's because I feel like to a degree, we are all actors in. This quote reminds us of that because we have a tendency, especially in this social media world, that we're living in. To think that there are people out there, large numbers of them, who are judging us.
15:03 - But most of the time this is something that we make up in our mind. Going back to that article an undisciplined mind does greater harm. This kind of goes right along with that. And it's something that, as harsh as it may be, worth keeping top of mind. Nobody cares as much as you think they do. November's quote came from my book “Aristotle for Novelists”, or actually “Poetics”, and it was my favorite too, actually, on the back dust jacket of the book. And it's Aristotle's quote, “Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill.” Or in short, many can create a complication, but not so many can resolve it well. And I think there's a lot there for you to chew on. And that leads us to the 12th quote coming from the 12th month of the year, December. And that is from the classic literary young adult novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. And he writes, “I mean, how do you know what you're going to do until you do it? The answer is, you don't.”
16:09 - Probably self-explanatory, but for me, it's an important reminder that actions are more important than words. It's easy to think about something. It's easy to say you're going to do something, but actually doing it is the more important thing, and you don't know what you're going to do until you're put into that situation. Action requires courage, and courage is hard. So either put yourself into that situation or stop talking about it. Perhaps another harsh quote, or at least interpretation of it, but I think it's a worthy one to end the episode on. Of course, if you're interested in finding out more about any of these quotes, I highly suggest going back and listening to the corresponding episodes. But having said that, that's all I've got. I want to thank you again for tuning in. This has been a longer episode to close out the year, and just as a quick reminder, I have a new book out. It is called “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. You can find more information about that on the website AristotleforNovelists.com.
17:16 - The link for that will be in the show notes. As always, I want to remind you that the best way that you can support this podcast is to click subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. The second best is to take two seconds, literally two seconds, and just rate it on whatever platform you are listening to this on. Both of those go a long way in getting the podcast in front of more eyeballs, and in return, inspiring more men to read. If you want to connect with me, there are two ways to do so, either on my website DouglasVigliotti.com, or on Instagram @DouglasVigliotti. It is the only social media that I have. And lastly, for more information on this podcast, including signing up for the monthly newsletter, all you have to do is head over to the website BooksforMen.com.
