John Dos Passos Quotes
The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of history.

Quotes to Explore
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Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.
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Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.
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A lot of my work involves instilling objects with the power of touch - a transference of soul, spirit, energy through actions.
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Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.
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I have gotten more flak for being a conservative Republican than I have for being trans.
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Sometimes I wonder where I am from. I am either way ahead or I come from another world. I don't recognise this world.
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In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.
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Before my son was born, I use to tell people that I was looking forward to no longer being the star of my own movie; then Harry came along, and it was like, 'Whoa, I'm really not!'
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I have a very wonderfully, bizarrely amazing relationship with my mother in that we've been through a myriad of emotions because we've acted together and played all these different kinds of mother-daughters.
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I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.
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My home is attached to a study - in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions.
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The young men in the inner city are without guidance, robbing and shooting each other with no remorse... Our system is crazy because we're planning to fail. Everybody needs something to grasp on to.
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There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.
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I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
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Lawmakers misrepresent the facts when they call the manufacturing deduction known as Section 199 - passed by Congress in 2004 to spur domestic job growth - a 'subsidy' for oil and gas firms. The truth is that all U.S. manufacturers, from software producers to filmmakers and coffee roasters, are eligible for this deduction.
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I was an all-sport athlete growing up. My dad, I think, hoped I would go to college on a scholarship.
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I was doing about five movies a year for many years. I was just so tired. I walked around feeling like a Mack truck hit me.
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My grandmother worked at one of those Bel-Air mansions, and we would go - not too often, but every now and then - to pick her up. Hollywood was probably 12 miles from my house, but it might as well have been a million miles away. The only time I saw that world was on TV. Until I started making records.
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One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.
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Defending is mostly about focus.
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I was a child of the women's movement. Everything I had learned was from my mother and my grandmother, who both had a very pioneering spirit. They had to, because they had to change flat tires and paint the house - because, you know, the men didn't come home from the war or whatever else, so women had to do these things.
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If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.
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The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of history.