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.

James Lasdun

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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.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Up
  • Women
  • Home

• 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.

  

  Earle Brown
  • People
  • Time
  • Reflection

• The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

  

  Harrison Birtwistle
  • You
  • Same
  • Influence

• 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.

  

  Cameron Russell
  • Different
  • Single
  • Day

• I don't get bothered by fans.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Fans
  • Get
  • Bothered

• I don't get star-struck at all.

  

  Sally Phillips
  • Star
  • Get

• Obviously, I never want to make the same record twice. I want to keep moving forward. That's the real challenge, I think.

  

  Washed Out
  • Real
  • Moving
  • Challenge

• I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • People
  • Problem
  • Smart

• 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.

  

  Calvin Peete
  • Man
  • Black
  • Traditions

• 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.

  

  Vincent Bugliosi
  • People
  • Music
  • Wisdom

• Questions that require answers are what keep readers going - and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence.

  

  Nancy Kress
  • Place
  • Start
  • Questions

• 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.'

  

  Walter O'Brien
  • Parents
  • Question
  • Teacher

• 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.

  

  Kara Swisher
  • Work
  • Long
  • Interesting

• He who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Opportunity
  • Fruit
  • Seed

• 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.

  

  Nancy Meyers
  • People
  • Writing
  • Reality

• 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.

  

  Sam Yagan
  • Up
  • Good
  • Game

• 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.

  

  Vanessa Lachey
  • Love
  • Me
  • Boy

• 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.

  

  Nathan Wolfe
  • Time
  • Energy
  • Health

• My greatest fear is to be misunderstood.

  

  Elliott Gould
  • Fear

• To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

  

  Charles Caleb Colton
  • Pride

• I started to hate fame, I didn't want to go out, because I didn't want to be recognised for what I was being recognised for.

  

  Charlie Simpson Busted
  • Hate

• In your 40s, you kind of know how things are likely to go, and you're better at saying, 'You know what? That just doesn't suit me...' I remember thinking in my 30s, 'I should go to Burning Man. I could be a Burning Man person.' And in my 40s, I'm like, 'You know what? I'm never going to go to Burning Man.'

  

  Pamela Druckerman
  • Thinking
  • Remember

• I don't think you'll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we're always in search of an upgrade.

  

  Henry Rollins Black Flag
  • World
  • Thinking
  • Perfect

• 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.

  

  James Lasdun
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  • Work
  • Holiday