James A. Michener Quotes
Very early on in life, I decided the hell with it: material things weren't for me. Christmas would come, and other kids would have all these presents, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.
Quotes to Explore
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You know, it's a hugely difficult thing to take any work of art or drawing and say 'make that real.'
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Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened.
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I think, for me, Julian Schnabel set a great precedent in being able to cross over so successfully. I feel like his artwork is kind of big, grand, and bombastic, yet the films that he makes are very beautifully sensitive, and I just feel that his filmmaking sensibility is very different from his artwork.
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I never wanted to give up my given name. I'm proud of it, but the only problem was that no one remembered it. It was just a little too awkward, and they mispronounced it so frequently.
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When you watch it, you're like, Wow. I look like that. But it doesn't feel like that at all. It was about communicating with Gale Harold and getting across what I wanted to say about the character.
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All the women in my family are very dramatic by themselves. They make the biggest things out of nothing. I think that's where I learned a lot about being emotional.
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It didn't scare me to be vulnerable because I think that's when you get something great.
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It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
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My life has been a dream. If someone had to write a story about it, it would seem a little unreal. It's the kind of story I would read and say, 'Nah, that's not possible.'
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I don't know how to make Harper and Alloy want me, not just my name.
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Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
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'Vanity' means worthlessness.
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The future ain't what it used to be.
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I've been fighting amidst a lot of opposition from both Hillary Clinton as well as some Republicans who wanted to send arms to the allies of ISIS. ISIS rides around in a billion dollars worth of U.S. Humvees. It's a disgrace. We've got to stop - we shouldn't fund our enemies, for goodness sakes.
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If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.
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Touring helped me understand where I needed to be better in my music.
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I think what probably happens when you put two awkward/clunky people together is that their awkward/clunky world seems like a normal world.
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Find something that you love to do, and find a place that you really like to do it in. I found something I loved to do. I'm a mechanical engineer by training, and I loved it. I still do. My son is a nuclear engineer at MIT, a junior, and I get the same vibe from him. Your work has to be compelling. You spend a lot of time doing it.
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You gotta understand - the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that's what actually happened.
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You know what daring really is to me? It's maybe much more simple: the willingness to get up and try it again. It's not about whether or not you fall down, it's how you get back up. And I've taken quite a few tumbles, myself.
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Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.
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There's no place in the world you can go and not hear rock-and-roll, from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to Phil Collins.
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Very early on in life, I decided the hell with it: material things weren't for me. Christmas would come, and other kids would have all these presents, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.
