Matthew Desmond Quotes
I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative device, a phenomenon that would allow me to draw in a lot of different players. I was like, 'Shoot, eviction does that.'
Quotes to Explore
-
It's interesting that one of the definitions of the word 'human' is 'sympathetic.' More and more people are beginning to show that they understand why that is important.
-
Polo drifts gently in and out of fashion.
-
There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.
-
I love to see women who are comfortable in their skin and dress to suit their body - that looks fabulous because it's authentic.
-
I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.
-
When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.
-
Being jealous of a beautiful woman is not going to make you more beautiful.
-
We've heard that the hookup culture is destroying us. We've heard that it's saving us. We've heard that it's racist. We've agonized over which one of these is true.
-
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
-
I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
-
I love the way girls in London dress; it's so different to the American 'blow-dry and immaculate grooming' thing.
-
While we know gambling is part of the industry in Las Vegas, we're not going to make it all that easy for you to pick up a ticket, a gambling ticket, on your way into the arena.
-
All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.
-
I always loved Sam Cooke, because he seemed very versatile. He sang gospel, soul, blues, pop music.
-
I was Irish; I was a woman. Yet night after night, bent over the table, I wrote in forms explored and sealed by English men hundreds of years before. I saw no contradiction.
-
I really feel that New York City is the greatest city in the world.
-
Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim.
-
Everybody struggles with being an oddball. It's tough trying to fit in when you're a kid; then you become an adult and you think, 'I'm just going to be myself and either they accept it or they don't.' But you know what? I like me, and that's the most important thing.
-
Seriously, I grew up a fan of Hulk Hogan, and I think I bring some of his best values to the ring... the values of a superhero. Always do your best. Never give up... I think kids want to believe in that, and they should believe in that.
-
Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.
-
Frank [Zappa] always wanted to do a sound library - he sampled so many great musicians. For piano, for example, he sampled every octave, not just one (that you could just transpose electronically), and he did all different types of attack, with and without pedals, all that kind of stuff.
-
The misnamed "feminine" woman, so admired by her creator, man - the woman who is acquiescent in her inferiority and who has swallowed man's image of her as his ordained helpmate and no more - is in reality the "masculine" woman. The truly feminine woman "cannot help burning with that inner rage that comes from having to identify with her exploiter's negative image of her," and having to conform to her persecutor's idea of femininity and its man-decreed limitations.
-
I feel greatly at fault in not having made a loud public protest about Belle Glade before this.
-
I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative device, a phenomenon that would allow me to draw in a lot of different players. I was like, 'Shoot, eviction does that.'
