Dinaw Mengestu Quotes

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

Dinaw Mengestu

• American

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Quotes to Explore

• Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Time
  • Happy
  • Interesting

• I moved about 45 minutes from West Hollywood, and I live surrounded by nature and the wilderness, but I constantly find myself walking around, like in the commercial, saying, 'Can you hear me now?'

  

  Olga Fonda
  • Live
  • Nature
  • Myself

• Actually, what will be shown from here to eternity will be Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr cavorting on the beach. 'From Here to Eternity' must have seemed like a chore to its director, Fred Zinnemann.

  

  Manny Farber
  • Beach
  • Director
  • Eternity

• My first job ever was on 'Peak Practice.' I just had to walk up the stairs. They kept the take where I slipped slightly, which was annoying.

  

  Vicky McClure
  • Up
  • Job
  • Practice

• Two hundred years ago, our precursors in Haiti struck a blow for freedom, which was heard around the world, and across centuries.

  

  Baldwin Spencer
  • World
  • Freedom
  • Years

• We do not yet have the solutions to these questions, but the awareness that we live in an endangered world is present in more and more life situations.

  

  Ulrich Beck
  • Life
  • World
  • Live

• Gun owners and non-gun owners alike agree on expanding background checks, making gun trafficking a serious crime with stiff penalties, making it illegal for all stalkers and all domestic abusers to buy guns, and expanding mental health resources so the mentally ill find it easier to receive treatment than to buy firearms.

  

  Gabrielle Giffords
  • Health
  • Serious
  • Gun

• Television offered me the opportunity to do new things; I had written a lot of scripts other than scary movies. I had actually written some romantic comedies and stuff that I really wanted to try my hand at, and nobody would let me do that. Television allowed me to do anything I wanted.

  

  Gary Sherman
  • Opportunity
  • Romantic
  • Scary

• When I'm actually writing by hand, I get more of a sense of the rhythm of sentences, of syntax. The switch to the computer is when I actually start thinking about lines. That's the workhorse part. At that point, I'm being more mathematical about putting the poem on the page and less intuitive about the rhythm of the syntax.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Thinking
  • Writing
  • Hand

• If I'm still walking, I am not dead. So I have to still walk and run towards the benefit of Lebanon.

  

  Najib Mikati
  • Walking
  • Dead
  • Benefit

• I picked up 'The Hunger Games' thinking it was written at my regressed reading level. I've spent hours reading it, and I'm not even halfway through. Our bass player, whose name is also Nate, ended up reading all three novels and loved them.

  

  Nate Ruess Fun.
  • Up
  • Thinking
  • Reading

• I'd probably describe my sense of humor as 'twisted,' I guess. It's not hard to make me laugh, especially when I'm surrounded by my close friends, especially my bandmates.

  

  Mac DeMarco
  • Friends
  • Humor
  • Laugh

• There are a lot of dynamics and a lot of politics that go into records and getting played on the radio.

  

  Isaac Hanson Hanson
  • Politics
  • Radio
  • Getting

• Look at misfortune the same way you look at success - Don't Panic! Do you best and forget the consequences.

  

  Walt Alston
  • Success
  • Best
  • Consequences

• I'm a firm believer that the world should be your oyster when you're cooking. People should open themselves to other cuisines - there are a lot of hidden secrets all over the world.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • People
  • World
  • Cooking

• I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.

  

  Yann Martel
  • World
  • Art
  • Think

• The U.N.'s humanitarian agencies rely on charitable donations from the public as well as the generosity of governments to continue their lifesaving work in response to natural disasters, armed conflicts and other emergencies.

  

  Ban Ki-moon
  • Work
  • Response
  • Generosity

• What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

  

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
  • Good
  • Society
  • Nothing

• I used to love Kapil Dev and, like any schoolboy, wanted to become a cricketer till I started dreaming of making movies.

  

  Imtiaz Ali
  • Love
  • Like
  • Movies

• Not only have children most certainly a right to their own ambitions, but their own lack of ambitions.

  

  Cornelia Parker
  • Children
  • Ambitions

• The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Good
  • Live
  • Country

• 'Beautiful things may be admired, if not loved,' asserted the Tin Man. 'Flowers are beautiful, for instance, but we are not inclined to marry them. Duty, on the contrary, is a bugle call to action, whether you are inclined to act, or not. In this case, I obey the bugle call of duty.'

  

  L. Frank Baum
  • May
  • Beautiful
  • Action

• I get very uncomfortable with people watching me.

  

  Lauren Conrad
  • People

• I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

  

  Dinaw Mengestu
  • American