James Fenton Quotes
An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.
Quotes to Explore
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My grandfather started a school for the underprivileged in Chandigarh, and that is why we moved from Himachal to Chandigarh. It was a small school, where even I would teach while in school.
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Time and time again, truly basic studies of simple experimental organisms have proved directly relevant to human biology and human disease. An investment in such basic studies is an effective investment indeed.
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Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
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In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation.
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What works for me is knowing the character in an emotional sense. I wish I was more logical but it doesn't work for me like that. I need quite a lot of time; it's why I always worry when I'm doing more than one thing at a time. I hope that some sort of magic will kick in.
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It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time. I am amazed I have been able to move beyond it. I had really all but given up trying, but I did it because it was my lifelong dream.
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Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
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There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version.
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Letters actually work. Even the top dog himself takes time every day to read 10 letters that are picked out by staff. I can tell you that every official that I've ever worked with will tell you about the letters they get and what they mean.
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I'm not afraid of turning 80 and I have lots of things to do. I don't have time for dying.
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I really wish that I would have gone to college. Even my son, who's into rap himself, I tell him and tell his children, 'Go to college. Get that education - it is so important. Don't do like I did.' I had all this singing on my mind, and I just didn't have time for it.
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I time everything. I'm a scientist at heart.
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I don't put a ton of time into my on-stage style, largely because I'm dumb about clothes. But I have friends who are very smart about clothes, and they teach me things. For the show, I'm mainly concerned with feeling comfortable, being able to jump around and get wild.
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I am a man who is noble. I have a good heart, but at the same time, I'm a little malicioso. There's no way of hiding that side.
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At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
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A show hosted by a black had never been accepted, so the first time that knob's turned on, people are judging against all they have ever been taught. I may have been the first black in the house.
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My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the time we have, to be generous - that was their lesson for the Uber-mind, and it was free. 'Do that,' they said, 'and then perhaps death shall have no dominion.'
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After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.
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Disasters are usually a good time to re-examine what we've done so far, what mistakes we've made, and what improvements should come next.
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Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.
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The White House tapes, the recordings that Nixon made of his conversations in office, have long been recognized as a marvel of verbal incontinence.
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I think we all realized that we had really been replicating things that had already been happening. I don't know if we were smart enough to realize that we were in a cul-de-sac, but we were curious.
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I never thought I could write fiction.
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An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.
