Ellen Willis Quotes
My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.
Quotes to Explore
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The point really is that a writer tends to write a book that he or she tends to write. It's as simple as that. Of course, it's important to make a living and all that, but the main impulse as far as I'm concerned - and I'm sure as other writers are concerned - is to tell a story that I feel impelled by.
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The only thing that matters is what happens on the little hump out in the middle of the field.
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I've found a letter that was written to me from a girl who was getting married. And she wanted to know the secret of a happy marriage. I said - and I wrote back and said something to the effect that I couldn't - I had no magic formula. And I never sat down and thought about it, but everything just fell into place with Ronnie and me.
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The American people know something is wrong as far as energy is concerned. They don't think they are being told the truth.
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Being a gal, people can be a bit patronizing. 'Oh, look at you using the computer.' They would never say that to a boy. And I don't let them do it to me.
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In terms of 'Seinfeld', I think there's lot of reality in a show that's supposed to be about nothing.
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I think a lot of playwrights have a script in their bottom drawer that hopefully no one will ever see about a bunch of young people sharing a flat and getting up to crazy stuff.
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If I had a gun to my head and I had to choose between theater and film I'd choose theater.
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I did as much research as I could and I took ownership of this illness, because if you don't take care of your body, where are you going to live?
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People on television have trouble with fame because audiences think they're their mates.
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I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music - which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there's no dream that's too big.
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We had times in '66 and '67 when we would pick up a platoon of privates out of the receiving barracks the week before we even graduated the platoon that we were on!
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All Hollywood corrupts; and absolute Hollywood corrupts absolutely.
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It's no fun for me to cover a song and produce it the exact same way as it already exists. When I hear that happening, I have to say, 'What's the point?'
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Madonna is a creation, so perhaps we should give her and the factory that created her a little credit, but I think that she should quietly disappear now. Poor Madge seems unable to decide whether she wants to look like Marilyn Monroe or Marlene Dietrich.
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In a city, it's very hard to do a restaurant, an avant-garde-cuisine restaurant, where each year you need to change the whole menu.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
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Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment.
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I had a romantic, 'Aren't I a good girl?' take on divorce, but the truth is that was stupid.
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To be fond of learning is to draw close to wisdom. To practice with vigor is to draw close to benevolence. To know the sense of shame is to draw close to courage. He who knows these three things knows how to cultivate his own character. Knowing how to cultivate his own character, he knows how to govern other men. Knowing how to govern other men, he knows how to govern the world, its states, and its families.
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The knowledge of this marvelous period has made faith far easier from an intellectual standpoint, and has enabled us to be more patient in waiting to see the truth, not as now.
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Sometimes when people talk, they don't always tell the truth.
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My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.
