James Lasdun Quotes
Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.

Quotes to Explore
-
The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home, and this and the slave code led to a development of which the South was really ashamed and which it often denied, and yet perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in the Border slave states for systematic sale on the commercialized cotton plantations.
-
It is not possible, given any degree of optimism and generosity in regard to people in general, to set a time limit on creative reflection or a limitation on the number of people involved in the creation.
-
The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.
-
Once you are a model, you do have to fly a million red-eye flights, and you do have to entertain a different client every single day.
-
I don't get bothered by fans.
-
I don't get star-struck at all.
-
Obviously, I never want to make the same record twice. I want to keep moving forward. That's the real challenge, I think.
-
I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.
-
Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves.
-
Just look at what is right in front of you. People don't do that. They see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see. They only hear the music and not the lyrics of human events.
-
Questions that require answers are what keep readers going - and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence.
-
Maybe I was unpopular a bit because I was a teacher's pet. But even the teachers complained about me. They would say to my parents, 'For every one question any pupil asks, Walter asks 10.'
-
I am an unrepentant tweetaholic. I use the communications service all day long to discover news, interesting tidbits and, of course, to flack the work of our tech and media news site, Re/code.
-
He who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others.
-
There's a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You're left wondering about the legitimacy of relationships. It's probably harder to entertain the same people with a more classic form of writing, and romantic comedies are a classic genre.
-
Dating is a numbers game. What we try to promise is good first dates. Once that first date happens, it's really up to you.
-
For me, the love really flowed when I found out the baby was a boy. That's when I could finally bond, once I knew 'it' was a him.
-
If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.
-
'Everybody thinks they want to see the truth,' said Tenkswa-Tawa. 'That’s one of the lies we tell ourselves.'
-
What is it but a low form of prayer when he or Les or anybody else God-damns everything? I can't believe God recognizes any form of blasphemy. It's a prissy word invented by the clergy.
-
Women get exhausted and beat down, and you just want to cry.
-
The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth inthe fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.
-
Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.
-
Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work, and that's not because they don't see the market for it.