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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Time was not passing...it was turning in a circle.
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I would say that Emma Stone and Emma Watson are two very talented young actresses who are very intelligent and have a great sense of humor and have learned to balance what they love with their acting career, and I think that's really a great thing.
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The only dancing I did was at the discotheques. I was a very good disco dancer. I say that I learned disco dancing at the wrong places.
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At one level, SXSW exemplifies serendipity, because whenever I come, I get these unexpected meetings with people I never knew existed, and you couldn't have planned it. But by making the choice to come to SXSW, I'm increasing the probability of those encounters.
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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.
