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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By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars - it was a very normal house, and I'd like my daughter to have the same thing.
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I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right.
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We're dealing with such enormous problems today that we have no other choice but to work together. If Iraq fails, if a religious civil war breaks out and the neighboring states are drawn into this conflict, if the Kurds declare independence and al-Qaida takes over an entire province - that's when the consequences will be dramatic.
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Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
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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.
