Blake Bailey Quotes
I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough.
Quotes to Explore
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Right now, I'm not really thinking about marriage.
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Understanding that being nervous, having doubts and lacking confidence are emotions that are human is how you deal with it. It is okay to feel that way... and then understanding that you can work through it.
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Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.
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I'd be kidding if I said that I predicted the financial collapse.
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With 'Mad Men,' people who grew up or were living in that time, they love to talk about what it was really like.
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Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.
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Thank God I had all these family values or who knows where I'd be now.
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Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.
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Yeah, I like to have fun - I think that's a good way to live. I think you're better at your job if you like it.
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But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.
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Yeah, I am lazy. There's no doubt about that.
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Qualifying for the Olympics is probably harder than winning a medal at the Olympics.
Mandy Bujold
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I'm one of the best condensers in the business.
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There are different types of talents and intelligences, and traditional schools sometimes ignore the creative ones. It is important for us to give kids every platform for them to find what they are good at and what they love. The arts also provide a space for newfound creativity.
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I don't think of my life as a cliche, but I'm a cliche eccentric. Complete with a strange name - I mean, who's named Val? How many Vals do you know? I mean, really?
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I wanted to tell a romantic and dark side of Ottoman history that was also slightly political, saying to the previous generation of writers, 'Look, I'm interested in Ottoman things, and I'm not afraid of it, and I'm doing something creative.'
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I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.
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I'm driven by history and our past. That's why I work in gold. It's in your veins. We've been lusting after gold since the beginning of time. God, glory, and gold.
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Man is the only creature whose emotions are entangled with his memory.
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A sleep without dreams, after a rough day of toil, is what we covet most; and yet How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay! The very Suicide that pays his debt at once without installments (an old way of paying debts, which creditors regret) Lets out impatiently his rushing breath, less from disgust of life than dread of death.
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How can we say any one actor's work was better than another's?
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...you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openess which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.
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I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough.
