Jay Parini Quotes
I've been teaching full-time for 41 years at small colleges, and I can't imagine what it would mean for me or my colleagues to be armed with handguns or rifles instead of books and a thorough knowledge of our chosen disciplines.
Quotes to Explore
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If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
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I find it quite boring when people do things that are very considered and thought through. I like things best when they're just done because they're fun or beautiful, or simply because they are what that one person wanted to do at that one time.
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Federal regulations should promote safety without unnecessarily burdening small firms and costing much-needed jobs.
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Extraordinary allegations require extraordinary evidence.
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Every idea has its time.
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You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.
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The research I have been doing - studying how foodstuffs yield energy in living cells - does not lead to the kind of knowledge that can be expected to give immediate practical benefits to mankind. If I have chosen this field of study, it was because I believed in its importance in spite of its theoretical character.
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What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.
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There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version.
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Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I'm going to continue fighting for the end user.
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Teachers need time to engage with colleagues - whether shadowing, mentoring, co-teaching or conferring. They need a voice in school decisions and to be trusted as professionals.
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My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.
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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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When I came to Congress, like our first panel, small business people, 64 percent of the people had health insurance. We'd buy it. Now, we're down to about 34 percent. That's why we have to do something on health care in this country because the cost is killing us.
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I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
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The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.
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There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.
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In L.A., it's easy to get wrapped up in this young Hollywood mess. You feel like you have to go out every night. You have to realize that you're here to work. I didn't move out here to party all the time.
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An intelligent being, is the active principle of all things. One must have renounced all common sense to doubt it, and it is a waste of time to try to prove such self evident truth.
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My family and I are very close, and they mean more than anything to me, but I'm also the kind of guy who likes to go out with my friends and have a good time on Friday nights.
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There are so many heroes just walking around in everyday life. It blows me away.
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The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.
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I've been teaching full-time for 41 years at small colleges, and I can't imagine what it would mean for me or my colleagues to be armed with handguns or rifles instead of books and a thorough knowledge of our chosen disciplines.
