John Kessel Quotes
I don't know if this is a stumbling block, but I had a real setback when I won a Nebula Award for the first story I ever had nominated for a Nebula in 1982. And you might think that was a good thing - and it was a wonderful thing, I don't regret it a bit. But I was sort of discombobulated by it.
Quotes to Explore
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Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.
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I'm such a stereotypical female learner in that I love social studies and love literature, and I always struggled with math and science.
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Hollywood is the only thing more ridiculous than Silicon Valley. There's nowhere else where it's stranger.
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I think there's something very dark in the South African psyche. I think we live a lot of the time in a state of a very low-grade civil war; the levels of violence in South Africa are extremely high. In a way, the civil war that never happened is being played out in a covert way, so we live with a lot of very ugly things.
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Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
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A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.
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Back in high school, I didn't ever see a Muslim homecoming king or queen - there was never even anyone nominated. It just seemed for a lot of those events, Muslim kids were not being included, and it was probably our fault too - no one was going for it, but no one was trying to push us to do it, you know?
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I am also a drummer of sorts. I've got an electronic set sitting in my bedroom.
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If there were a major earthquake in Los Angeles, with bridges and highways and railroads and airports all shut down and huge buildings collapsing, I don't care how much planning you do, the first 72 hours is going to be chaotic.
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If I do something caring for a friend, I have no doubt in my mind they would do it for me.
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If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, 'Tell the truth.' If I got three more words, I'd add, 'All the time.'
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Before every show, we get into a circle, hold hands, and someone makes a speech. Most bands are too cool for that.
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You see what happens in college and high school games today - a three-point shot or a dunk. I think that's the reason that you see a lot of that in the pros today.
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You don't have to have a great voice to sing, just a distinctive one. But make sure you say the words clearly and tell a story.
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I tend to like simple music. And clever, succinct lyrics. Songs that don't try to be more than they need to to be effective, to stir up something emotionally within you.
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For me, what I really want to come out of it is to show people that I can hold together a movie, be the number one character and play someone who is twenty or twenty-one.
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My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do.
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I am not one of those people who believe that MLK achieved more in martyrdom than he could have if he'd lived: imagine what a guiding influence he could have on the world were he still among us.
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Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it's the real test of your character and of your faith to say, 'Things are not going our way, but I'm still being good to people; I'm still attending church; I still have a good attitude.'
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Yes, I would love to play one of the leads in one these movies and have all those challenges and deal with all those complications, but the business being what it is, there is a slot for me in these kinds of films, so I enjoy them, and I enjoy the people that I work with.
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America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.
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Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
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The real impulse of most books is to tell a story to keep the reader lashed to the page. I don't get why that's a proper use of an adult's time.
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I don't know if this is a stumbling block, but I had a real setback when I won a Nebula Award for the first story I ever had nominated for a Nebula in 1982. And you might think that was a good thing - and it was a wonderful thing, I don't regret it a bit. But I was sort of discombobulated by it.
