Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Quotes
I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.
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I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.
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I didn't live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don't know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.
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I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.
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I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
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I don't talk about Amy Winehouse as a 'singer.' She's a pioneer. I listened to her endlessly when I started writing.
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One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.
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If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.
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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
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It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.
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I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
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A lot of people thought you couldn't be a top-level athlete as a vegan, but people like Mac Danzig and Jake Shields are proving that's wrong. And it's better for me as a performer.
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In high school, I was doing my magazine 'Rookie' and a lot of writing, and I became a little less interested in the fashion world. I was approached by an agent for writing, and I said I wanted to act as well. They sent me scripts, and then I got my first Broadway play, 'This Is Our Youth'.
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Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.
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It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.
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As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
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Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.
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It was seldom that I attended any religious meetings, as my parents had not much faith in and were never so unfortunate as to unite themselves with any of the religious sects.
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Americans have always been excellent at making romantic comedies - but dramatically, we don't really try to do it.
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What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires - committed to looting and conquest - have done. So that's American exceptionalism: an exceptionalism based on noble ideas, ideas that it holds itself to even when it falls short of them.
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First, I used some of my own experiences and observations from attending a public high school. Secondly, I joined in some Internet chat rooms for gays and lesbians.
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I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.
