Donald Hall Quotes
I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.
Quotes to Explore
-
I think people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that's cliche, I don't know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high.
-
I'm a big believer if you want to change people's minds or get someone to vote for you, either a voter or a colleague, you've got to first get their attention.
-
I guess I went into journalism to save the world. I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.
-
I do look forward to keeping in touch with the guys, because we'll always be connected in people's minds.
-
I love talking about myself.
-
I've never seen anyone handling pans in the streets of New York, and if I did I doubt I'd give them money, unless I needed a pan. I do give money to homeless people, whether they ask or no.
-
When people talk about the impact of mobile dating, everyone focuses on real-time meeting - this idea that my pocket will vibrate every time a hot girl walks by. That's important. But it's not transformative.
-
The people in your life are important. Meaningful relationships with those people are very important.
-
I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.
-
People don't blame the act of driving for auto accidents.
-
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
-
The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar 'queen,' alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.
-
Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.
-
People assume that because I'm a great athlete, I can dance. But no. My rhythm is off a little bit.
-
It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
-
Some people say I have attitude - maybe I do... but I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does - that makes you a winner right there.
-
I know what people laugh at. I know their vocabulary.
-
I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, 'Ah yes, they good.' Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way.
-
I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.
-
The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one-the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective. The one artisanal, teachable thing is outer conduct.
-
I think it's important that your first film be your worst film, that one's life trajectory should go up.
-
If you have to be persuaded about something, you shouldn't do it.
-
I always like a woman in power in politics. I think they're pretty inspirational in terms of looks to begin with. It's very calculated.
-
I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.
