S. Jay Olshansky Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.
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I never feel like there's any one point to the film, to anything, to any of the movies I've made.
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When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
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In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.
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I try and sit on the fence because as soon as you voice any kind of opinion, people begin to think you're an idiot.
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No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
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My boys asked me to write beautiful letters for their ex-girls so they could get them back. I thought, 'I should be writing songs for myself.'
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Events tend to recur in cycles.
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I've never been tempted to do these hideous furniture shoes.
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'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
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I'm looking to expand my portfolio while I'm on top and while I'm young.
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Peter Wagner, my son, just won the Bel-Air Junior Club Championship. Parred the last three holes. One-putts, up and down. Us Wagners don't hit greens. We chip and putt.
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My guilty pleasure is I like to watch a lot of HGTV. I really like watching design shows about houses, like extreme homes. Like buying a bridge and turning it into a house or something like that. I really am interested in home design or something like that... architecture.
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Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower.
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I like movies where you feel like it was actually thought through.
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There's this tendency to be like, 'Where's the negative stuff? How valid is the criticism?' But honestly, what people think of me is none of my business. If I live on the Internet looking for public approval, I'm going to be miserable.
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I do not like the idea that a Russian company cannot be successful without Western experience. I think that, at the end of the day, it is a question of bringing benchmarks from other countries. So far, the golden benchmark has been the West.
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With a focus on records and making money, you tend to miss a good story.
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There is still a lot of football in me and I enjoy watching the players go out there and be the best players they can possibly be.
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Some of my work is very instinctive, some of my favourite things I've ever done are just two minute sketches, nothing is better when you get it like that so quick, then other work takes months.
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Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.
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I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.
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Death is a zero sum game for which there is no cure.