Jeff MacNelly Quotes
Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
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We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.
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Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.
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Boats are something I am very, very passionate about; cars are something I grew up with... I used to race cars since I was a child.
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One trap you can fall into when playing someone iconic is to end up doing everything in an iconic way, no matter how pedestrian or mundane that thing is.
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When I did 'Boyz N The Hood', I never thought how we grew up in South Central was interesting enough for a movie.
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I grew up watching my mom and dad selling rooms in our motels. We had CEOs coming to our house so that my dad could persuade them to have their executives stay in Hyatt hotels.
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I couldn't live up to it. So I chose to run away.
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But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.
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I don't feel like I'm grown up. I feel like I'm a kid.
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I think a lot of writers are tempted to add complexity by over-complicating things, but always remember that most natural rules/laws are, at their core, simple. Start simple, and build from there, or you risk getting yourself and your readers tangled.
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I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
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The '90s was a decade of mundane market-consumer nothingness where there was nothing coming up from the streets; you just had someone in an office deciding what was cool.
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The amount of attention and sensitivity and education that we're getting in terms of specifically the transgender community is great, and certainly that's new to me. But it's not incredibly unfamiliar. I grew up in downtown New York in the '80s.
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A lot of people forget how important it is to be creative. We get caught up in getting ahead and in day-to-day minutiae. But creativity is a fundamental mode of expression, as is being tenacious and standing by your own convictions and passions, even if it's not the 'popular' choice.
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My brain is so anxiety-prone, like a pinball machine. If I don't get up in the morning and focus my thinking, my breathing, and my being for about 12 minutes, I'm just a screwball all day long.
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I've been giving back since I was a teen, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving and handing out toys at toys drives for Christmas. It's very important to give back as a youth. It's as simple as helping an old lady across the street or giving up your seat on the bus for someone who is pregnant.
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Up to nineteen seventy six when I quit gymnastics I was very, disappointed because I didn't have anything which is, live with. I didn't have a friend so I didn't have a coach anymore.
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What makes writing a memoir difficult is harder to quantify. Is it learning to know when you're ready to talk about something? Is it seeing the structure in a lumpen mass of fact? Is it finding out what you were really like as other people saw you? Yes to each.
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Over the years, I've learned, focus on the job at hand, and opportunities will open after.
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Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war.
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It is always nice when you are honoured. The Lifetime award makes me feel old. I am only 55.
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For me, the other thing is not just a strong sense of spirituality.
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Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.
