Billy Bragg Quotes
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
Quotes to Explore
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I was always told at school that you had to have a back-up plan, but all I ever wanted to do was act. There was no plan B for me.
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If I were to listen to people all the time when they say, 'Hey, this is a really high challenge, this is a high climb, the bar is pretty steep,' then I wouldn't have gone to the academy. I wouldn't have become an aircraft carrier pilot. I wouldn't have become a Navy SEAL for sure. And I probably wouldn't have applied to Harvard.
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Once you become poor, tired and time-constrained, you become a much better human being.
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So as I was growing up, my father was always in the middle of making a film or preparing a film. It was a full-time, all-consuming type of operation.
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If you feel like snacking, stock up on almonds, walnuts and cranberries.
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It's not often that the idea of continuing something for a potentially long period of time sounds exciting to me, because I really am a gypsy by nature.
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I grew up watching my mom and dad selling rooms in our motels. We had CEOs coming to our house so that my dad could persuade them to have their executives stay in Hyatt hotels.
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The types of melodies I tend to write kind of have this bittersweet quality; they're meant to be uplifting but kind of have this melancholy vibe to it.
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Sometimes, in order to follow our moral compass and/or our hearts, we have to make unpopular decisions or stand up for what we believe in.
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The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor.
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I think feminism is that you just have to stick it all out. I remember this one time when someone interviewed me, and I was young, and they said, 'Do you see yourself as a feminist?' And I was like, 'I don't know. I'm not really comfortable calling myself a feminist.'
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There are two types of courage involved with what I did. When it comes to picking up a rifle, millions of people are capable of doing that, as we see in Iraq or Vietnam. But when it comes to risking their careers, or risking being invited to lunch by the establishment, it turns out that's remarkably rare.
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I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.
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Every job is important because each one represents an American's livelihood and ability to raise a family. Yet spending our time building walls around America will do nothing to help us compete for the millions of new jobs being created.
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An important notion in Indian political thought that is of great value to Hungary is the idea of peaceful development.
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I have met hundreds of young people doing just what George Romney did: using a hand up in tough times to become part of the American Dream.
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Instead of trying crazy diets now, I just live by a few easy rules: I try to stay away from white flour as much as I can - I go for grains and brown rice instead, and I pick lean meats, like chicken or turkey, over red meat most of the time.
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Honestly, humans are social creatures that really crave intimacy, and I think that the friends I have who are trying to somehow go it alone are suffering for it.
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I'm not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever.
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I like the gypsy aspect of this business.
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Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.
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So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
