Jennifer Johnston Quotes
My father was a little frightening - a huge man, six foot four - and he looked like God. He was always a visitor, as far as I was concerned, because my parents separated when I was nine. We only became friends when he was old and began to shrink. During the war, he was a BBC war correspondent and did some extraordinary broadcasts.
Quotes to Explore
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I am completely in favour of dialogue and engagement. But it must be a true, open dialogue.
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Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
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Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.
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You really don't get paid in these independent movies, no matter how many people see them.
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The best restriction I learned was getting into the habit of doing something, even if I didn't feel like it, instead of running away from it. Sometimes good work needs to be earned, and when you can overcome yourself, the muse notices and celebrates.
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I have never been asked to be in a movie musical. Other than 'Yentl,' which I didn't sing in.
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I was obsessed with the idea of going to college. And I took many years off after that, so I sort of missed the weird, crazy transition that was what making movies was in the nineties to what's happening now.
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You have plausible deniability, as they say in politics, as an author with movies. Because if the movie is terrible, you simply say they failed to catch the genius of the book.
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Sometimes I hope that through osmosis I might get a workout - just by wearing the clothes.
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I would ask my mother to show me how to walk - and she did show me. That's why I think it's funny when people say, 'Did so-and-so teach you how to walk?' And I always say, 'You must be talking about my mother, because it was my mother who taught me how to walk.'
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I think with world building, it's important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture and see what makes it cohesive.
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When I'm in Senegal, I can't just sit in isolation making music. People need my help. And the Senegalese people helped create my music. It comes from the country itself.
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There might be 1 finger on the trigger, but there will be 15 fingers on the safety catch.
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Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can.
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But freedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even when the body is in bondage.
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Your focus should be on creating an environment where growth can occur and then letting nature take its course.
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Boys are so much less mature than girls as it is.
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With relationships, I've been through a lot of different situations with different people, and I write about it.
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I didn't go to school a lot.
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I didn't realize Boston was so easy to get around. In my head, I imagined Boston being this really sprawling city.
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'Brutality!' cried Tristam. The class was at last interested. 'Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging out of eyes. The firing squad in the cold dawn. And all this because of disappointment. The Interphase.'
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I guess I can be surprised I'm alive. I'm taking a little better care of myself than when I was a young person. My father died when he was 63. My mother made it to 74. My grandparents, God, they were dropping like flies.
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My father was a little frightening - a huge man, six foot four - and he looked like God. He was always a visitor, as far as I was concerned, because my parents separated when I was nine. We only became friends when he was old and began to shrink. During the war, he was a BBC war correspondent and did some extraordinary broadcasts.
