John Battelle Quotes
It seems there is no area in our culture that is not touched, changed, even swallowed by the Internet. It's both medium and message, mass and personal, social and solitary.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.
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Write your own songs. It helps you to mean what you're singing, which will then make it mean something to listeners.
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I don't believe that anybody has come to a conclusion on why something is funny. It's funny because it's ridiculous and it's ridiculous for different reasons at different times.
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Back in 1999 and 2000, a few of us... a very few of us... Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I... offered free electronic copies of our books in an effort to reach an audience we otherwise wouldn't have reached and to test out a new marketing concept for books. Despite the industry screaming we were crazy, it worked.
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.
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When you reach 50, what you care about is being honest, being accurate, and being an example.
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I've never had a couch that needed to be cleaned or learned how to couch-clean in general. That feels too grown-up.
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Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.
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I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.
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When you get successful, you can do pretty much whatever you want.
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What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.
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When I had worked on my first book, I had readily shown bits and pieces to everyone - for encouragement, to force myself to write.
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In writing lyrics - well, for me, anyway - it's about getting into character, you know? 'Who is writing this?' In the case of the original 'Thick As A Brick,' supposedly a precocious, very young child who's fantasizing about his future and the context of all the confusing elements to which school boys are subjected at that time.
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It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.
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Most people want to become movie stars and I just want to be in the business. I already was a star. If I get the part of a lifetime and it blows up, then that's wonderful. But if the acting doesn't work, fine. I'll just be a producer. And if the producing doesn't work, fine. I've got a lot of other stuff.
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I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'
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We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.
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Men and women are immigrants in each other's worlds.
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With Shakespeare, there's no subtext; you're speaking exactly what you're thinking constantly.
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If you express yourself too much. you're overacting; if you underplay it too much, it can come across as wooden.
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Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency that swamps our ability to provide.
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I just thought Harvard sounded great. So let's see if I get in. I didn't really have a big back-up plan.
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The Old Firm clubs are not easy clubs to manage and sometimes I think frustration comes in that, in the end, make you happy to be leaving.
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It seems there is no area in our culture that is not touched, changed, even swallowed by the Internet. It's both medium and message, mass and personal, social and solitary.
