Elizabeth Strout Quotes
As a novelist, I like the contained drama and complexity of the courtroom, though I don't watch those shows on TV. I prefer the hospital shows because I wanted to be a doctor.
Quotes to Explore
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The sole ultimate factor in human decisions is physical force. This we must learn, however repugnant the idea may seem, if we are to protect ourselves and our institutions. Reliance on anything else is fallacious and ruinous.
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I'm afraid to fail again.
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It's such a weird self-confidence that an artist has - to conceive of this thing that serves no function and say, 'I'm going to really work hard for it and give it and it's just going to matter to people.' You really have to believe it all on your own.
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I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses; acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement; frighten the 'Daily Telegraph' with a progressive graduate payment; and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.
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They thought in terms of: whatever you had that started you at the box office, this was it.
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And finally I begin to have such a success in my examinations that I found myself in a career you see.
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I'm not the girl next door.
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What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
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Children refuse to compromise. Adults learn how.
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Playing a character for four years, in people's minds, that's who you are.
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A different language is a different vision of life.
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The great thing about life - I'd rather not know and just hope I'm happy and healthy and I feel as good about my life as I do now.
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At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
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Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
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There was a space program before there was integrated circuits.
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My kids have played sports all their life, and one thing I've tried to teach them when you lose, you try to be a gentleman about it.
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Growing up in Dumfries, I got no sun - I spent all my time in my room making records. When I came to America, it made me recognise the benefits of sunlight. Oh, and I also got a good haircut. I used to have a terrible haircut.
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As an artist myself, I know what it's like to put your heart and soul into something. You can feel the presence of another person.
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At the end of the day, I feel like I have no one to blame but myself if I'm not satisfied with how I look on the runway.
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If you look at the early nineteenth century you see the idea that we educate children to be voters and to be participants in our popular democracy. And then at the turn of the century when more and more immigrants are coming into the schools, Americanization becomes a more explicit part of the agenda.
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Overpopulated fiction can be so confusing that readers put the story down. Under-populated novels can seem claustrophobic or boring. You want the right number of characters for your particular work.
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I'm hooked on Polanski's films, his psychological thrillers. I love 'Rosemary's Baby,' I love 'Repulsion.'
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The concept of disruption is about competitive response; it is not a theory of growth. It's adjacent to growth. But it's not about growth.
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As a novelist, I like the contained drama and complexity of the courtroom, though I don't watch those shows on TV. I prefer the hospital shows because I wanted to be a doctor.
