John Metcalf (John Metcalf) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I have written to Israel's friends around the world, including the U.S. Congress and the E.U., and asked them to make funding for the United Nations dependent on ending blatant discrimination against Israel at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
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When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.
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I always thought of it like, 'What can my body do for me?' and not, 'How do I look?'
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I really make sure that my girls understand the importance of education. I don't want them to be spoilt and only know private school kids. I want them to behave well by example.
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I've worked with a couple of these really cool, great actors like Ted Danson and Glenn Close. They all have their own presence when they walk into a room, and I was excited to see what Tom Selleck's 'space' was going to be like.
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Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
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It's nice to win. I'll never win again. I may have to take up golf - take on Tiger.
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When I was five, I discovered a secret box that contained Mummy's stage makeup. It was like finding buried treasure. I tried the rouge, the eye shadow, the lipstick. But I couldn't get the rouge off. Mummy spanked me terribly.
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I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision.
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Once a year I will clean my room, just because I feel I should.
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International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.
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Most of us have days or weeks or months so awful, we wish we'd never been born.
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I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.
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Everybody understands that you're supposed to say 'our employees are our most valuable asset' to the point where, even if it's really true, they're not going to really trust you until you've earned that - same with customers.
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Fame is not the glory; virtue is the goal, and Fame only a messenger to bring more to the fold.
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Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
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He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
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What we do at NASA is inspiring. It's reaching, it's visionary, and it inspires people on Earth to try hard things.
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I really believed Obama when he spoke in 2008, but I remember watching his victory speech after this last election and it was the same speech. Exactly the same speech. I felt like he didn't even believe it anymore. He seemed to be tired of saying the same thing.
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Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.
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The capacity for loving strangers, whether one thinks of them as fictional beings or stars one will never meet, is a profound reflection on the new consciousness whereby every individual leads his or life while aware of all the billions of other people on Earth. Perhaps it is a fantasy or a fallacy that we can feel for so many strangers. Perhaps it is a mask for selfishness. But no matter the modern stress on special effects, there isn't a sight in movies as momentous as shots of a face as its mind is being changed. And only movies have allowed that.
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Only one man has the right to boast, and that's the man who never does.
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Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate.
