John Edgar Wideman Quotes
What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.
Quotes to Explore
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I know from my own experience that great films and great actors can have a really big influence on you. There is a place for art in the world, and if you're lucky enough to be good at something and to keep being given work, it's not such a bad thing.
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The most important thing Paris gave me was a perspective on Latin America. It taught me the differences between Latin America and Europe and among the Latin American countries themselves through the Latins I met there.
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Much of the conventional wisdom associated with Vietnam was highly inaccurate. Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public, Congress, and members of Lyndon Johnson's own administration.
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A fighter lives in his training camp, and I'm not always paying attention to what is happening on the outside. But I do know the Mexican people and the Mexican-American people in this country are very hard-working people. That's my only comment about Donald Trump.
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There's nothing more American than movies.
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Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
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I can only speak as an American, but most journalism here isn't doing its job any more. It's about selling stuff.
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I was always trying - I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.
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A performance art piece is unprecedented. It is difficult to censor since it has a good possibility of never being done before.
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I'd like to do some crazy art installations and design some weird synthesizers and work with other people and make some fun stuff for a bit. Maybe tap into virtual reality stuff or maybe write another record... We'll see.
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I don't attempt to make people uncomfortable; I think that my standards in terms of art and journalism always have necessitated my discomfort.
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One of the things that I like about 'Narcos' is that not only Pablo but with all the characters - this is not a black and white show. This is not a regular American cop show where two cool cops go to save a country from a bad guy. All the characters are very complex.
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I never wanted to be a public figure. I feel that I always have to dampen down people's expectations. They expect me to be an oracle, wave a magic wand, sprinkle some slow, sparkly dust on them, to make everything all right.
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Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
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Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
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So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naive, I feel!
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If I'm creating a free-form piece of art, I can make it look like anything I want, and nobody will say it's wrong.
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My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be.
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The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.
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I always felt like I was born in the wrong time period. I felt like I should've been born in the mid-to-late '40s.
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A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.
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One must look for one thing only, to find many.
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Jay-Z is like a rap-savant, he doesn't have to write the rhymes down, he can create complex raps in his head. I mean he does memorize it, he just doesn't write it down on paper. He doesn't freestyle onto the track, it's all thought out.
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What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.
