W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
Quotes to Explore
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Body experience... is the centre of creation.
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Well, I decided to stop. And I did. I stopped smoking, and I stopped speed at the same time.
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I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.
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I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.
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I'm the diva from the future. The next gig's on the moon. Catch me while you can.
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It seemed like most of the memories faded before they had time to form. And after a while, my life with my father seemed like a familiar story or a distant dream.
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The two sensibilities, the visual and the verbal, have always been linked for me - in fact, while reading a particularly evocative passage, I will imagine what the photograph I'd take of that scene would look like, even with burning and dodging notes. Maybe everyone does this.
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The voters in District 8 shared our vision that Washington is broken, and we're going to go up there and fix it.
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Actors go inside the heads of other people and are not afraid of the complicated places you can find yourself.
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I can't wait to meet Jennifer Hudson, Tamyra Gray, George Huff, Ruben Studdard, and I love me some Clay Aiken.
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We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we're being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.
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There is no bigger aphrodisiac than power.
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There are competing studies on how much crime drops or doesn't drop when there are strict rules on gun possession and sale. I don't think there's any question that New York City's very tough laws have reduced violence.
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Why are numbers so important? I take up a film I like, give it my best, and move on.
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No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
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When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.
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My comedy isn't going to solve problems; I'm not that deep.
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True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.
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It's dangerous to be anybody popular.
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I've lost a lot of teeth and square yards of hide. But I've never lost my self-respect, and I've kept what I find in few men of my age - my enthusiasm.
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I don't want to be Marilyn Monroe. In many ways, that's a good comparison. Because Marilyn Monroe was a sexpot, all that stuff that I have no interest in. For me, it's much easier to just try to make people laugh than to try to be the hottest thing in the world.
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Do goofy stories make people nice? What if, in their goofiness, these stories somehow inspire that in the right way. Is that a social good?
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Having a dream, living that dream, losing that dream, dreaming again and then having that dream come true again is one of the greatest feelings ever because I'm stronger.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
