Matthew Desmond Quotes
If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.
Quotes to Explore
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Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
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This is how it has been since time began: If you want to make something really worthwhile and true, then you have to suffer for it.
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The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America.
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'The Crumbling of America' should be required viewing for local and national government, not to mention the local and national media who should be keeping their feet to the fire on guarding against disaster.
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Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
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I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
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I lived in Montreal from the time I was 12 until I was 16.
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Our movements reveal a great deal about who we are. A record of our locations over time can reveal whether we go to tent revivals or radical political meetings, abortion clinics or AIDS doctors.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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Touring a segregated America - forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most 'cos you don't realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.
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Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
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When I had my first boy it all started and that male energy seemed to keep me awake but since my daughter, who's incredibly serene, I can't seem to stop sleeping because she's asleep all the time. It's a pattern.
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I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.
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America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.
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I was obsessed with Hollywood from the time I was a kid. I always knew I wanted to live in Los Angeles.
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Every friendship is different because everyone's personality is different.
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To me, America is just another market.
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I didn't have a desk to write 'Red Queen' on, so I got a nice writing desk.
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Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
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We're bombarded with images. Take the time to stop and look at something then connect with them and maybe they're thinking the same thing, I used a lot of devices to catch the eye of people who have seen a lot of stuff, having worked in advertising and in editorial. I have learned to get someone to stop and look at something, that language.
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Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.
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There's parts of touring I like. I like the actual performance part, but the bit when you're in the airport waiting at the carousel for your bags to come around, I don't like that a bit.
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Your cheatin' heart, will make you weep. You'll cry and cry, and try to sleep. But sleep won't come, the whole night through. Your cheatin' heart, will tell on you.
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If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.
