David Liss Quotes

I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

David Liss

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Quotes to Explore

• Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Friends
  • Friendship
  • Destroy

• People are struggling. They're trying to make ends meet, and they're looking for Washington to deliver for them. And they don't feel that that's been happening as quickly as it should. We share that frustration. There's no one more frustrated than President Obama.

  

  Valerie Jarrett
  • People
  • Trying
  • Looking

• When people go through something rough in life, they say, 'I'm taking it one day at a time.' Yes, so is everybody. Because that's how time works.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • People
  • Life
  • Time

• Plays by people like Martin McDonagh and Brian Friel attract huge audiences, not because they're Irish, but because they're brilliant plays.

  

  Garry Hynes
  • People
  • Like
  • Irish

• Lillian Gish thought that there should be a cabinet position for the arts and I think she was right. I think she was right.

  

  Fay Wray
  • Position
  • Arts
  • Lillian Gish

• You've got to be closer to the edge than ever to win. That means sometimes you go over the edge, and I don't mean driving, either.

  

  Dale Earnhardt
  • Win
  • Driving
  • Edge

• I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.

  

  Kara Walker
  • Real
  • Truth
  • History

• A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

  

  Umberto Eco
  • Dream
  • Dreams
  • Nothing

• I learned the mechanics of how to fly a plane, but I never lifted a plane off the ground.

  

  Adam Beach
  • Never
  • Fly
  • Learned

• I've always wanted to do a shoot with snakes - big snakes, like pythons.

  

  Cara Delevingne
  • Like
  • Always
  • Big

• Youth is that period when a young boy knows everything but how to make a living.

  

  Carey Williams
  • Boy
  • Period
  • Young

• The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Wisdom
  • Wise
  • Fool

• Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a AAA country.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Country
  • May
  • America

• Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Parent
  • Sin
  • Crime

• Crime, especially crime involving money, reflects the gap between the expectation to provide and the ability to provide… If we really want men to commit crime as infrequently as women, we can start by not expecting men to provide for women more than we expect women to provide for men.

  

  Warren Farrell
  • Men
  • Women
  • Money

• I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl.

  

  Barbara Stanwyck
  • Girl

• When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.

  

  Anthony de Mello
  • Hate
  • Guilty

• If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd.

  

  Deborah Tannen
  • Friends
  • Parents

• An horrid stillness first invades the ear,And in that silence we the tempest fear.

  

  John Dryden
  • Fear
  • Silence

• Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

  

  Ernest Hemingway
  • Honor
  • Glory
  • Abstract

• Cultivate your garden… Do not depend upon teachers to educate you … follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony… In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. "Happiness," said Chamfort, "is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.

  

  Will Durant
  • Education
  • Happiness
  • Harmony

• I can dunk! I can dunk, and not just in NBA Live.

  

  Chris Paul
  • Live

• I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

  

  David Liss