Matthew Desmond Quotes
When I talk to booksellers, they tell me how hard it is to hand-sell some of my books because I do keep popping around.
Quotes to Explore
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I've never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that - of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.
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I am in love with myself, with my friends, with my family, with kids, with life and my movies.
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If North American musicians would only know how uncomfortable life is for European musicians.
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If you're not kind, then you won't be attractive to me personally because that spirit shines through and makes people attractive.
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May Heaven be propitious, and smile on the cause of my country.
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I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild.
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There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
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In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.
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As far as everyone else's opinion, I mean, if I would have thought that everyone was right, I probably wouldn't have left Compton, so I don't get too caught up on what the next person thinks.
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I enjoy passing time in my house. I'll get up, head out on the terrace, think about what to do, fool around oiling the floorboards or hanging pictures askew.
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Discouragement, fear, doubt, lack of self-confidence, are the germs which have killed the prosperity and happiness of tens of thousands of people.
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I don't wear plaid shirts.
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I just butcher a book. Everything I underline I assume is important to me.
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You have to take criticism with a grain of salt because you're never going to please everybody.
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I'm a dilettante. My governing word is 'curiosity.'
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My father was very clear; I had to have an ordinary upbringing. I was put to work as a lowly-paid trainee after college. I didn't like it at the time, but I can't help but feel that that was probably the best thing for me.
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The most important thing to realise is that everyone is capable of telling a story. It doesn't matter where we were born or how we grew up.
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The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That's something obviously that The Beatles started and... so having that darkness there opens another door.
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My mother was a Bohemian - in the good sense of the word. A searcher. And she investigated various religions.
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I've been in a New York City-based cabaret for the past seven years called The Citizens Band. It's possibly one of the most brilliant things I've ever been involved with.
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De Lubac discusses an atheism which means to suppress this searching, he says, 'even including the problem as to what is responsible for the birth of God in human consciousness.'
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I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be.
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There was a time when I was 23 years old that I thought my career was over because I couldn't move my hand. It turned out it was just a pinched nerve.
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When I talk to booksellers, they tell me how hard it is to hand-sell some of my books because I do keep popping around.
