John Henrik Clarke Quotes
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
Quotes to Explore
-
I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible.
-
Weddings are really good for making you feel terrible about yourself if you're not where you want to be in life.
-
Gossip, even when it avoids the sexual, bears around it a faint flavor of the erotic.
-
I like that about London. It comes together when it needs to, and it has magic.
-
Most faults are not in our Constitution, but in ourselves.
-
I don't believe love goes away just because you're buried in a casket.
-
I was very rebellious.
-
I won't give the credit to 'good fortune.' Whatever I have achieved is because of my hard work and passion.
-
My reading and drawing drew me away from the ordinary interests, and I lived a great deal in the world of imagination, feeding upon any book that fell into my hands. When I had got hold of a really thick book like Hugo's 'Les Miserables,' I was happy and would go off into a corner to devour it.
-
Freedom is secured every day by our men and women in uniform. We must build a future worthy of their sacrifice.
-
I don't feel that I've had a life of abuse or that I am a victim in any way. My life is pretty typical of a lot of Americans of my generation who grew up in the sixties in families like mine that were sort of unconventional.
-
Survival requires us to leave our prejudices at home. It's about doing whatever it takes - and ultimately those with the biggest heart will win.
-
People still say to me, 'What, you still live in Mexico?' I don't have to go to the United States simply to find work, and I don't have to stop what I'm doing. I mean, which Hollywood film beats 'The Motorcycle Diaries?'
-
Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.
-
When I was a kid, we got in a cipher and battled each other lyrically. We told jokes and made the hottest dance moves.
-
I had thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but I gave it up.
-
You cannot say we are a healthy, dynamic democracy when one party wins almost two-thirds of the vote.
-
I like routine.
-
I have friends who read my books in Greek.
-
If you really believe in yourself, you cannot listen to other people.
-
One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory.
-
Well, when Eleanor Roosevelt's mother dies, she goes to live with her Grandmother Hall. And her Grandmother Hall is in mourning. She's in widow's weeds. She's in her 50s, but appears very old. And she's exhausted from raising rather out-of-control children. Her favorite daughter, Anna, has died (Eleanor's mother), and she has living at home two other sons, Vallie and Eddie. And they are incredible sportsmen, incredible drinkers, out-of-control alcoholics.
-
I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.
-
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
