James Weldon Johnson Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Success must never be measured by how much money you have.
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Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
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Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.
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Ben Franklin may have discovered electricity- but it is the man who invented the meter who made the money.
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Underground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground.
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My Aunt Marsha ruled the family with a rod of iron. She was one wicked, mean woman.
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Most of my instruments are handmade.
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It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.
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I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
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You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you're an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party... My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
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You can call Hanson a whole lot of things, but hip-hop isn't one of them.
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There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others.
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As you get older, you can suffer from painful hips, and our joints wear a lot quicker than for people of average height.
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When I sing a set, people will say, 'I love 'Mayday.' People just love 'Mayday' so much. I love it too.
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I consider the guitar a tool for the most part. I do pick up the acoustic now and then, I certainly don't have any routine. Usually the only time I practice is when the band gets together. Hendrix has always been one of my favorite players, but I was a sucker for Nugent in the late 1970's.
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Qualifying for the Olympic Games was one of those moments where you just cry because it was like you've climbed Mount Everest.
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If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.
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Even painless research is fascism, supremacism, because the act of confinement is traumatizing in itself.
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I think the last one would have to be The Godfather because it was such a powerful story. There was lots of violence in it but I could take it because I thought there was a reality to it. It wasn't gratuitous, it was just these guys' story.
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I am the most proud of is the show called Cracker and I think it only lasted a season or two. It was with a gentleman named Robert Pastorelli who has since passed away, but it was based on an English television show that was really popular.
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Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, but graciously to know I am no better.
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As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
