Jonathan Raban Quotes
The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975.

Quotes to Explore
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When I was, like, 16, I went in to the head of Disney, and I hadn't taken acting class really at all, and I didn't know what I was doing, and it was really embarrassing. Of course, you think Disney wants over-the-top and funny, and I was just trying to be over-the-top and funny, and it just wasn't working, and that was the worst.
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I think I'm a lot like other moms out there who feel like if we don't have the pecan pie we have every year, then it just won't be Christmas.
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I was making comebacks every single year. That makes it difficult mentally. It causes a lot of stress.
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I don't think there is much value in trying to use the moon as a base to go to Mars. That's going into one gravity belt and having to get back out of it again. And the moon doesn't have a lot to offer as a resource base.
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You learn who you really are in a fight - what you're really made of. You have to face yourself and rise above your own fears and failings.
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Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.
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When you work as hard as you can and as much as you can to make your first album, and you don't make any money, then you change things.
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Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
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People work hard.
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I think it's natural when a team has such high expectations, under .500 halfway through the season, they're going to go after a brand new coach.
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Different directors offer you different things, and it's not necessarily the most obvious things.
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Anytime you spend 15 or 16 hours a day with someone, five days a week for six months, that's more time than some people spend with their own families, so it does affect the dynamic between the actors.
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I just try to speak passionately about things I'm involved in and moved by.
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I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
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I'm not stuck in Strikeforce. I'm happy to be with them. It's where I started, and they've been great to me.
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My family had a business where they worked with gravestones, and I remember growing up and playing in cemeteries like it was a normal playground.
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Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.
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Our experiences of the Solstice depends entirely upon where we are when it occurs. Neither Solstice encompasses everyone. Neither can. The Solstices stand forever opposed, literally at the two poles of our Earth and experiences.
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Invitat culpam qui peccatum praeterit
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We wanted to make something that sounded perfect because of the quality of the emotion...the honesty.
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Gossip, in its earlier forms, contained information that was critical to survival because, in clans of 150, what happened to anyone had a direct impact on everyone.
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You have plausible deniability, as they say in politics, as an author with movies. Because if the movie is terrible, you simply say they failed to catch the genius of the book.
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The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975.