Dave Van Ronk Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Don't hate me, but I've always been skinny. I got lucky.
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Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.
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Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
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I can see through almost any scam, especially one perpetrated by the federal government. I can see through it... they can't pull the wool over my eyes, it's absolutely freakin' impossible to pull the wool over my eyes about the government.
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I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.
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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father's Cuban, and in 'Body of Lies,' I played an Iraqi.
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I'm an ordinary Tasmanian like everybody else, and I have weight issues; I have issues around finding the time to do the exercise and things, but in my role as Health Minister, and in my role as myself as well, I have to look after my own health.
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The way I look at it is everybody should have the right to get married, if they so choose.
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I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.
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I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand.
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I've lost a lot of teeth and square yards of hide. But I've never lost my self-respect, and I've kept what I find in few men of my age - my enthusiasm.
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I think something that's very relevant in real life and that they don't portray enough on TV is that when you think 'Christian,' you think 'goody two shoes' - they have to look a certain way and do certain things - and it's just not true.
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If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.
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I've always written about social concerns. My first book was about Spanish Harlem.
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You don't need to follow trends to be stylish.
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Whenever you bring up women's internal workings, guys want to change the subject. Unless, of course, they're trying to change the laws.
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All ballet, all reading, all music. That was my world, my inner world.
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People in D.C. are so psyched when anyone dramatizes them in an exciting way. They're a lot more open to looking at the nastier side of themselves than the media is.
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You can't abuse your voice by yelling and screaming.
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We no longer seek the 'cause' of events in the nature of a single isolated object, but in the relationship between an object and its surroundings.
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Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of "I'll show them." If you don't have it, don't become a writer.
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I'm a very, very stubborn man.
