Jesmyn Ward Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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In real life, I'm polite and nice all the time. It's fun to play people who aren't. It's escapism.
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But I've always attracted attention, it's true, ever since I was very young.
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The truth is that technology is only valuable if it helps you run your organization better.
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Sometimes you lose sight of what's going on around you.
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The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
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Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.
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Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.
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Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.
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I love and really respect strong women. I'm obsessed with Scarlett Johansson and Drew Barrymore and Penelope Cruz. They are just really incredibly strong-willed, intelligent females in the industry.
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I probably spend the most time with Toews: we have the same schedule, and we're roomies on the road; we sit next to each other. We do a lot of promotions together.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
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I just got a band together in mid-2012, and we played our first show in October of that year.
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My family is full of musicians, and a couple of times a year we get together and jam at my cousin's studio. We improvise and have a great time.
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When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, 'I don't have time.' But that's the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.
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For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dramatized with dialogue and telling descriptions of who is present and what they're all doing.
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The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power.
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Americans believe cotton is best, but we've invented new fabrics that will change your lifestyle.
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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The power of love is a strong thing.
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Once the church is ready to associate with instituted power it is obliged to associate with all and sundry forms of the state. The scandal is that each time the church seeks to justify both its adaptation and the existing power. It continues to legitimize the state and to be an instrument of its propaganda.
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For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of. That's probably why I get up so early and have writing time in the quiet dawn hours, when no one needs me.
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Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
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Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.
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I think that fiction has a certain power.
