Philip Levine Quotes

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

Philip Levine

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Quotes to Explore

• Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.

  

  A. N. Wilson
  • Time
  • Friends
  • Mother

• I've always loved working out. When I was little, my dad used to make me and my sister do 10 press-ups every day before we brushed our teeth in the morning. It was like a boot camp! Then I did a lot of athletics at school and was a dancer.

  

  Fleur East
  • School
  • Dad
  • Day

• Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • Things
  • Test
  • Certainty

• I am inspired by anything beautiful. Sometime it's a pair of eyes or flowing gorgeous hair, other times it's the sky or a sunset. I've been inspired by supple skin or the texture of a soft shirt.

  

  Nadine Velazquez
  • Beautiful
  • Eyes
  • Hair

• If you ever meet an actor who's the child of actors, they'll never tell you that they wanted to be a star. But what I did realise early on was that I just wanted to be in that tribe.

  

  Jack Davenport
  • Star
  • Never
  • Child

• When you read about the best places to work, it's never about salary; it's about catered lunches, the daycare - it's the cool stuff that matters.

  

  Paige Craig
  • Work
  • Best
  • Cool

• I wouldn't mind going somewhere and taking a president position and signing acts and taking the attention off of me and taking what I've learned in my career and applying that to another person's.

  

  T.I.
  • Mind
  • Career
  • Attention

• Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience.

  

  Kate Forsyth
  • People
  • Children
  • Think

• That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

  

  V. S. Naipaul
  • Writing
  • Judging
  • Surprise

• I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.

  

  Felicity Kendal
  • Time
  • High
  • Try

• I think the process is one of using the camera and sound in the way a detective uses a magnifying glass: to find the clues. They're discovery devices, not performance devices - you're watching things the way a cat does. You're not judging. You're there to witness something.

  

  D. A. Pennebaker
  • Cat
  • Judging
  • Performance

• One of the recent love stories I enjoyed was Bhaskar's 'Bommarillu.'

  

  Ram Charan
  • Love
  • Stories
  • Love Stories

• The vast majority of Muslims living here are peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, however, we also see religious and political fanaticism among Muslim groups in Germany.

  

  Otto Schily
  • Political
  • Religious
  • See

• I wouldn't say I'm vain - I'm just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn't vanity, but the hair was.

  

  Gary Numan
  • Important
  • Job
  • Hair

• Happiness is nothing but temporary moments here and there - and I love those. But I would be bored out of my mind if I were happy all the time.

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Mind
  • Moments
  • Happiness

• Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • Truth
  • Light
  • Sought

• There is a fundamental notion at the core of American identity that, in this country, any little boy or girl can grow up to be president.

  

  R. J. Cutler
  • Up
  • Country
  • American

• I'm still at the beginning of my career. It's all a little new, and I'm still learning as I go.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Career
  • Learning
  • Beginning

• For example, a breakthrough in better batteries could supplant hydrogen. Better solar cells could replace or win out in this race to the fuel of the future. Those, I see, as the three big competitors: hydrogen, solar cells and then better batteries.

  

  Bob Inglis
  • Future

• John F.Kennedy gave probably the greatest inauguration speech ever that first time, but I guarantee you when he first walked out there he was thinking, "Goodness gracious this is big and I better be up to the task."

  

  Barack Obama
  • Up
  • Time
  • Thinking

• I've been watching 'The Cosby Show' and 'Roseanne' a lot right now, and those work so well because they're not, like, jokey comedies; they are coming from real characters. We want our show to be like that. A family show.

  

  Abbi Jacobson
  • Work
  • Real
  • Family

• Until the people, by amendment, change the constitution, I urge that the counties cooperate with one another, that future road work be more uniform, and done in such a way that it will result in connected and continuous highways.

  

  Arthur Capper
  • People
  • Work
  • Done

• Keep it moving. Don't hoard. Money's no good, get rid of it. Turn it into people doing things. Turn it into jobs. Turn it into happiness...The more people I employ, the happier I am - that means my money's goin' into other people's lives, and if I can give 'em something to create that they can be happy with, that's great.

  

  Neil Young Buffalo Springfield
  • People
  • Giving
  • Mean

• Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

  

  Philip Levine
  • People
  • Work
  • Poetry