M. H. Abrams Quotes
Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.
Quotes to Explore
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I never wanted to give up my given name. I'm proud of it, but the only problem was that no one remembered it. It was just a little too awkward, and they mispronounced it so frequently.
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There are parallels between the music and film worlds, but they're really very different. I feel like they're just two different ways to channel my creativity.
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I'm always shy when I meet people I admire so I wouldn't be able to say anything rather than, 'How do you do? Love you! Bye!'
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My voice is not good enough for me to sing a song.
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Whatever the situation at hand, that's what I'm dealing with and trying to be true to it in that moment.
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Playing evil is just not interesting. I don't think anyone who does evil stuff thinks they're doing evil stuff. That's the scary part.
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I don't ever want anything to come in the way of me truthfully telling a story.
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Tonight we send a message to our party that here in Illinois, there will be a new generation of Republican leaders and we will fight to provide a better tomorrow for future generations. We've made clear the status quo is no longer acceptable.
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The publishing industry is an archaic and inefficient industry.
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When I arrived at Barcelona, I was following a dream, but I now realize sometimes it's better to be content with what you have rather than follow a dream which nearly kills you.
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In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.
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I'd like to think you don't stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.
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Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
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At school I had only admirers; I had no friends.
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The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
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A film set is the most comfortable place I could be in the world; that's what I know.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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What you learn is that you can't please everyone all the time.
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I have no television - I hate it.
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People assume NFL cheerleaders are within some vague sniffing distance of the good life, but a Ben-Gal is paid seventy-five bucks per game. That is correct: seventy-five bucks for each of ten home games. The grand cash total per season does not keep most of them flush in hair spray, let alone gas money to and from practice.
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I don't want to make a cheap analysis, but when you have, like I did, a father incapable of showing emotion, who spends his life telling you that no one will love you if you aren't perfect, it leaves scars.
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All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.
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A man can't pass on, like a mother could, an awareness of your body, or sensuality, or what it means to be a woman. I was never taught what femininity was. I learnt it - or rather I invented it - on my own. I tended not to talk at all, if people were staring at me.
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Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.
