Deborah Tannen Quotes
I think of myself as a writer as much as I think of myself as a linguist and an academic. I really enjoy writing - playing with language and getting just the right metaphor.
Quotes to Explore
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Unfortunately, there is still much to mine in this world and explore creatively.
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Do we really want Washington administrators coming between us and our doctors?
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When I was in school, there was no such thing as girls' athletics.
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Sometimes, you follow your dreams. I say to the young people, 'If you have a dream, chase it.'
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A plan is always successful if the plan is good.
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The creative works of the entertainment industry belong to the millions of people who make them and are not for others to steal or unlawfully distribute.
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I'm a mother of a three-year-old, but when I started 'California,' my son wasn't even a twinkle in my eye. Because the book took as long as it did, I wrote it before I was pregnant, while I was pregnant, and as a new mother - so I enjoyed a diversity of experiences while creating this world.
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I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me.
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I don't see myself as a diva at all.
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There are films you see that only reach your eyes. Then there are films that you can watch... that reach down to your throat, or reach your heart. 'In the Mood for Love,' though, reached all the way to my belly.
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Ain't no place like New Orleans. It's one of kind.
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We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.
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Meeting Oprah Winfrey, I cried like a baby. Meeting Steven Spielberg, I cried like a baby. Meeting Denzel Washington, I gushed like a crazy woman. If I don't get excited or star struck by someone I've been dying to meet, it's time to retire.
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Any commodity that sees its price going higher will see new mines opening up. When the supply increases, the prices soften. When prices fall, some mines with higher production costs will shut down as they become unviable.
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Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.
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I don't want to be liked. I want to be respected.
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On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.
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I don't think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations.
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It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am not their family, and no amount of birthing sons, and cooking dinner and raking leaves or planting the gardens or paying for the plane tickets is going to change that. If I don't come back in eleven months, I will not be missed, and no one will write me or call me to acknowledge my absence. Which is not an accusation, just a small truth about clan and bloodline.
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Somebody tell the damn players to start playing like old school.
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I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.
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Successful people decide how they are going to live; they are not victims of circumstance. In good times or bad times, they know where they are going and they know that they are going to get there.
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I think of myself as a writer as much as I think of myself as a linguist and an academic. I really enjoy writing - playing with language and getting just the right metaphor.
