Joseph Heller Quotes
Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
Quotes to Explore
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I think in every picture that I've ever made. Everything that I've done torments me. I really would like another chance except I'd be too embarrassed to ever really try to do them again and no one would want to see the same movie just done differently.
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As a kid growing up - I can see now - it didn't matter what I did, as long as it was something I could be really good at. Cycling just happened to be the opportunity that came along.
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I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.
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I have been running since I was 7. I was trying to restructure the way my body was made instead of trying to master the way I ran. I would get so frustrated with my starts in practices that I would just cry. When I ran, I wouldn't even try to get out of the blocks, I would just run.
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There are lots of actors who insist on speaking the lines themselves, and you hear the same thing from directors and the audience, but I don't think it's worth getting het up about. I think it makes more sense to use someone who speaks that country's language: that's what voice actors are for.
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Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
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As a boy, I was a member of a club run by the famous reptile showman Ross Allen, and the club sent its members pseudoscientific papers mimeographed on construction paper with a three-hole punch.
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I, as a cricketer, would like to see 100 counties playing top-flight cricket, just like tennis and football. If I am alive to see that, I will be very happy.
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Big-government proponents embrace both the power of the federal government and the idea that millions of Americans ought to be dependent on its largesse. It's time to return to our Founders' love for small government. More is not always better.
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My first day of high school, I wore brown boys' corduroys that my mom had sewn Sesame Street elastic into - they were my coolest pants - and a lime green Patagonia fleece that my mom found at Goodwill. I loved fleece.
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Fools are more to be feared than the wicked.
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Growing up, I was not used to good things happening to me.
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When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.
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Texas Republican political leaders take perverse pride in how deeply they have cut our state's education budget. Thousands of teachers have been pulled from classrooms, schools have closed and valuable programs have been canceled. In many places, districts are forced to choose between prekindergarten programs and English, algebra and art.
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Cancelled isn't a bad word because it happens everyday.
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I've done it all.
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I think it's a mistake to work on success in career. I've worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.
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At some point, life starts to pass you by and becomes about avoidance. I want to stay clear from that situation, because I don't like that.
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The typewriter separated me from a deeper intimacy with poetry, and my hand brought me closer to that intimacy again.
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Hold a true friend with both your hands.
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You've got to enjoy whatever you can and forget about the rest.
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What business, said Priscilla's look more plainly than any words, what business had people to walk into other people's cottages in such a manner? She stood quite still, and scrutinized Mrs. Morrison with the questioning expression she used to find so effective in Kunitz days when confronted by a person inclined to forget which, exactly, was his proper place. But Mrs. Morrison knew nothing of Kunitz, and the look lost half its potency without its impressive background. Besides, the lady was not one to notice things so slight as looks; to keep her in her proper place you would have needed sledge-hammers.
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Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
