John Edgar Wideman Quotes
The whole idea of spellbinding, of being an entertainer, being the center of the stage, making up words - that let me know that writing is nice.
Quotes to Explore
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The fact that we live in a world where black people have to strategize so they're not brutalized by police is insane.
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I have to protect myself because people think that because you come into 25 million homes every week, they know you. I walk the line between being gracious and being rude.
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I drive a car, like an adult. Not brilliantly. I'm not great.
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In China, we don't know about the swimming pool game, but we know about Marco Polo.
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Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.
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I doubt there's any government in the world that guides itself primarily by strategy or conceptual documents or worldview. Anybody who has the reins of power has to look at practical limitations and tradeoffs - the fact that you can focus at most on one or two things at a time, that resources are limited.
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People still kill in the name of religion. We haven't evolved to the point where we're one tribe called humans.
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I don't take pleasure in anyone's demise, really.
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I don't like baseball movies. I like movies about moral courage and people who are indomitable and courageous and right.
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My songs are very personal, which means they are fantastically therapeutic to write, but performing them night after night is emotionally draining.
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I think the American people are very smart in understanding our country is very trustworthy with nuclear weapons. We've had them from the beginning. But they have also been critical for keeping the world more at peace than it would have been if it hadn't been for the American nuclear umbrella.
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'Vanity' means worthlessness.
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You learn something out of everything, and you come to realize more than ever that we're all here for a certain space of time, and, and then it's going to be over, and you better make this count.
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Don't feel sorry for me. I've had a great life, great friends.
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I came up with this statistic that if a kid makes something himself, he's 90 to 95% likely to try it. And of course, then, if it's good, he'll eat it!
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Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned up a significant cache of nuclear materials.
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Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy.
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Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here.
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We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.
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It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
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I always compare myself to the best.
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One ought to begin an analysis of power from the ground up, at the level of tiny local events where battles are unwittingly enacted by players who don't know what they are doing.
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The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you.
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The whole idea of spellbinding, of being an entertainer, being the center of the stage, making up words - that let me know that writing is nice.
