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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We are always getting ready to live but never living.
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I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.
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(On his Catholic faith): 'Certainly it has been the rock on which I have always been able to rely in good times and in bad, and it is the lodestone of my life.'
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'Under the Poppy' is the love story of Istvan and Rupert, lovers and friends from childhood, who've been parted by jealousy - and a secret betrayal by Istvan's sister, Decca, who also loves Rupert, with whom she runs the brothel called Under the Poppy, where the floozies cater to every taste from saucy to peculiar.
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If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
