John Edgar Wideman Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.
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I don't see myself as ever being like anybody else.
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With every bathroom renovation, there are three areas that I focus on: budget, function and style.
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This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.
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There is no point in pointing fingers because there are three fingers pointing back at you.
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You don't actually have control of the position people want you to be in. If they say, 'You king of the blacks,' you're king of the blacks - whether you like it or not.
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Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.
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Sometimes it takes dealing with a disability - the trauma, the relearning, the months of rehabilitation therapy - to uncover our true abilities and how we can put them to work for us in ways we may have never imagined.
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And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing.
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I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me.
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In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her.
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Americanism demands loyalty to the teacher and respect for his lesson.
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I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.
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I know it's a cliche, but I see myself as a citizen of the world. I was brought up in Switzerland by German and Turkish parents but I've very much grown up in San Francisco. I have a European sense of aesthetic, but I'm also deeply steeped in the notion of change and entrepreneurship that is associated with Silicon Valley.
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To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic.
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I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn't perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.
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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
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Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
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In God's world there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority.
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It's true that I've never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.
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I tend to treat everyone like equals. That is my downfall, though, because Oprah is Oprah, and Barack is Barack, and you've gotta come in with a certain level of respect and admiration and love while still having that respect. Look at them - these people are, at this point, royalty. I think I get a little too chummy.
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If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
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...golf appeals to the idiot in us, and the child. … Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
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Books were my Internet, my TV, my movies all rolled into one.
