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
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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.
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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.
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I guess I went into journalism to save the world. I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.
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I do look forward to keeping in touch with the guys, because we'll always be connected in people's minds.
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I love talking about myself.
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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.
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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.
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The people in your life are important. Meaningful relationships with those people are very important.
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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.
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Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.
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People assume that because I'm a great athlete, I can dance. But no. My rhythm is off a little bit.
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It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
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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.
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I know what people laugh at. I know their vocabulary.
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On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them.
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It's just kinda irritating to me that we're awarding people in mixed martial arts for trying to move away and not finish the fight.
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Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.
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My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
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I love it when people doubt me. It makes me work harder to prove them wrong.
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There are a lot of elements when you're writing, or when I'm writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way.
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It's easy to focus on the things that divide us. Sometimes too easy.
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What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak.
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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.
