Paul Auster Quotes
The childhood scenes [ in The Tree of Life] are tremendous. My favorite moment is when the mother levitate - for three seconds. Of course, this is how a child thinks of his mother.
Quotes to Explore
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If I hadn't spent many years trying to be as compassionate as Mother Teresa, as positive a thinker as W. Clement Stone, as prolific a writer as Stephen King, and as good a speaker as many of the legends I have studied, I would not be as successful as I am today.
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On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against.
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Laughing and crying are very similar. They're an extreme response to life. You see it in children who start laughing hysterically.
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I've never really lived a conventional life, so I think it's quite foolish for me or anyone else to start thinking that I am going to start making conventional choices.
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There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.
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I started playing chess when I was five years old. I learned the moves from my mother, then worked with my father - and later trainers. My style became very technical. I sacrificed a lot of things. I was always hunting for the king, for the mate. I'd forget about my other pieces.
Garry Kasparov
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When I was born, the doctor looked at my mother and said, 'Congratulations, you have an actor!'
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I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.
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Reducing the price of AIDS drugs gave me so much satisfaction that I've been thinking what else I could do. One day, I thought, 'Let's look at cancer and see how we can spare cancer patients' unnecessary suffering.'
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During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence.
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My mother raised us to think that if we worked hard, and if we put our end of the bargain in, it would work out OK for us.
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Mark Zuckerberg needs no introduction these days, what with all the magazine covers and morning news shows. My mother knows who he is now, and my mother can hardly turn on a computer.
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We tend to think of extremes of emotions as registering, for example, you have to cry or laugh or get angry. But for the most part, we find it difficult to read each other most of the time. If you walk through the street, most people are pretty difficult to read. But they're thinking inside.
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'Perfect' is about a set-up that looks perfect from the outside - beautiful country house, beautiful wife and mother, everything where it should be - and the deep fissures that, in fact, lie beneath that. 'Perfect' was partly a response to the shock of my first book, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry,' being a success.
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The fact of leaving one's country, one's family, one's roots, can be painful. My father had already found his place, but for us, for my mother, it was very difficult to get our bearings.
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In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labor.
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Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
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My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.
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I started in London, as a kid. My mother knew I had sort of an inbred talent. She was an actress, so I inherited it from her. But I think I got a lot of it from my grandfather, who was a great politician.
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As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.
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Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.
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When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation.
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There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.
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The childhood scenes [ in The Tree of Life] are tremendous. My favorite moment is when the mother levitate - for three seconds. Of course, this is how a child thinks of his mother.
