Katherine Dunham Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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My function is, as objectively and accurately as I can, to present reality to people out there, and doing that as quickly as we do is quite difficult enough, thank you.
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As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.
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I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.
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If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
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To this day, I've never figured out a single locked-room mystery.
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By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.
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And my mouth is not a sewer, although some people may think it is.
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In the 60s, if you wanted to be an actor, you couldn't do just one thing.
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I always knew I wanted to make my own way; I never wanted to be dependent on my father.
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The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.
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Lyndon Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who feared dissent and craved reassurance. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson's principal goals were to win the presidency in his own right and to pass his Great Society legislation through Congress.
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I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.
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Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
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I have born-again Christians in my family, and they are completely against abortion... Everybody's got to stop being afraid of it real soon. Who's going to do it if a woman's network doesn't? People are going to be dying.
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I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.
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Dried porcini add a substantial, deep flavour to otherwise more neutral vegetables. I use them in risottos, mashed roots and winter soups.
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I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.
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Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.
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Life is miraculous, even when it's disastrous, it's still incredible, I'm fascinated with everything, life is fascinating, I'm fascinated by trees and dogs, but no one wants to hear me talk about it.
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Faith Alone is what really matters.
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What I wanted to do was to look at the powerlessness that I felt as - and continue to feel at times - as a black man in the American streets. I know what it feels like to walk through the streets, knowing what it is to be in this body and how certain people respond to that body.
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One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
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We weren't pushing Black is beautiful. We just showed it.