Mark Pagel Quotes
I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the environment is really rich.
Quotes to Explore
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It is so hard to make important decisions that we have a great urge to reduce them to rules.
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Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.
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Remember that life's big changes rarely give advance warning.
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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
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It is quite common to meet people that live a few kilometers away from Mexico and that have never been there. We need to revive on many levels an illustrious desire to get to know the world, to learn another language, to understand and create empathy with people that live a few kilometers away from us. It's never late to do this.
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The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.
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Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
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That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them.
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I was very shy, but when I performed, I felt like I was in my own little world. I became more confident. Dancing taught me discipline and to feel comfortable in my own skin.
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When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.
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When people connect to my work, it makes me feel great. A lot of that stuff is really deep, and when I play something and people feel what I feel, and use it in important situations in their lives, like at weddings or funerals, that's so powerful. It means I can connect with them on an important level.
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The art world is never going to be popular like the NFL, but more people are buying art and I think that's cushioning, to a great extent, our art-market cycles.
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St. Petersburg is a gem of world culture and Russia's most European city.
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In terms of competitiveness of new global environment, Kenya will have absolutely no choice but to tackle the most important constraint to its development: it has been corruption.
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To me, it was a sad fate to have been born into a period and a world where everything was in tip-top order, and the only real excitement was to be found in history books and occasionally also in the paper.
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In the developed world, we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases.
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I am inspired by show girls and Vegas. I was a cabaret performer, so that's where all that influence comes from.
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I truly believe that everything Sci-fi taught me as a child about an efficient and wondrous world will be happening in my lifetime.
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I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.
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It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.
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It is important to exhaust the potential of existing markets. But it is equally important to open up new markets.
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When I write, I'm not trying to be funny. It's the way I look at the world.
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I face every project the same way - do it right and give 110%. 100% isn't good enough.
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I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the environment is really rich.
