Dinaw Mengestu Quotes

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

Dinaw Mengestu

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Quotes to Explore

• Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives.

  

  Haniel Long
  • People
  • Life
  • Live

• To be at ease is better than to be at business. Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else.

  

  Baltasar Gracian
  • Time
  • Business
  • Better

• If you come to my house, you won't see a wall of trophies or things like that. I'm sort of 'on to the next thing' all the time.

  

  Pat Metheny
  • Time
  • House
  • You

• 'Shameless' was such a weird time in my life because I never really experienced any kind of role that put me that much in the spotlight before.

  

  Laura Slade Wiggins
  • Life
  • Time
  • Weird

• The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.

  

  Saint Augustine
  • Light
  • Like
  • Spiritual

• For my parents' generation, the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love; it was a partnership. It's about creating family; it's about creating offspring. Indian culture is essentially much more of a 'we' culture. It's a communal culture where you do what's best for the community - you procreate.

  

  Aasif Mandvi
  • Family
  • Parents
  • Culture

• My message to the kids and our fans is hockey's a great game. There's a lot of hockey being played at all levels. Get involved, do it. We will be back and we will be back better than ever and hopefully as soon as possible. Don't give up on the game. It's too good.

  

  Gary Bettman
  • Up
  • Good
  • Great

• In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.

  

  Fareed Zakaria
  • World
  • Power
  • Debt

• The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.

  

  Vince Lombardi
  • Control
  • Win
  • Leader

• We must keep both our femininity and our strength.

  

  Indra Devi
  • Strength
  • Both
  • Femininity

• I'm going to try to do music for the rest of my life, but that's just trying. Maybe it's not going to work out. Who knows?

  

  Mac DeMarco
  • Life
  • Work
  • Music

• Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.

  

  Umberto Eco
  • World
  • Lies
  • Possible

• The whole decathlon is ridiculous, but the 1,500 meters is insanity.

  

  Rafer Johnson
  • Whole
  • Ridiculous
  • Insanity

• That's the thing with sci-fi and action roles. You have to play the danger as real. If you don't, you end up with egg on your face. You have to commit. You can't think about how stupid it might look without the special effects.

  

  Victoria Pratt
  • Up
  • Real
  • Action

• My siblings and I, we were raised on TV and films. Not a day went by that we weren't watching one of three movies - 'Caddyshack,' 'Animal House,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' - on rotation. Our comedy, our personalities were set watching 'Sesame Street': these really sort of wacky, Jim Henson-y characters.

  

  Teddy Sears
  • House
  • Comedy
  • Day

• It's a trap I've fallen into earlier in my career - trying to be liked. Don't do it. When I watch TV and I see someone trying to make me like them, acting cute or quirky or goofy, I'm not impressed. Don't act like America's watching you. Just latch onto your character. Characters are flawed. Be unlikeable. Be flawed. Be a person.

  

  Nathan Fillion
  • Trying
  • Character
  • America

• I'm a television junkie.

  

  Candice Accola
  • Television

• We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole.

  

  Sam Harris
  • People
  • Christian
  • Humanity

• Trying to put music out there in the world is a pretty exciting, yet terrifying, thing and I've just been through the ringer.

  

  Aaron Bruno
  • World
  • Music
  • Trying

• For 'Iron Man' I had to improv with Robert Downey Jr., which is like going up against LeBron in basketball. At one point he stopped and said, 'Can we give a round of applause to Olivia, because she's rocking it right now.'

  

  Olivia Munn
  • Up
  • She
  • Man

• I think film is the best medium to inspire people. It's a combination of image, dialogue, and music, which can make for a powerful message or a simple escape.

  

  Martha Hunt
  • People
  • Music
  • Simple

• I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again.

  

  Chester Brown
  • Done
  • Reading
  • Mom

• The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

  

  Dinaw Mengestu
  • Time
  • Work
  • Great