Jostein Gaarder Quotes
If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.
Quotes to Explore
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I remember reading the cruelest, most awful thing about my hair online. A person speculated about who I was as a person and even read into my personal life based solely off my hairstyle. He or she said I must be lazy because I have short hair. It was just devastating.
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I just let the songs tell me what to do - they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don't judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.
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I really found this campaign odious. I couldn't get up for it. The quality of the candidates and the campaign, I just found the whole thing second-rate. I didn't know how to explain to my granddaughter that I was spending my dotage writing about Al Gore and George W. Bush.
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Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
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People see me now and ask if I'm still running. I may look like I am, but I'm really not. People think I still run every day but I ran for 25 years and I deserve to not do anything but walk or ride the bike with my kids.
Gail Devers -
I asked my parents for permission to study in America and they were so sure that I wouldn't get in and get a scholarship that they encouraged me to try. So I applied to Yale and got an excellent scholarship. I then worked for the Boston Consulting Group for six and half years.
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A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.
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A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man.
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I hate to lose. It's a bad feeling, but, I mean, it kind of gets you resettled, gets you back right.
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The best people to provide valuable information about any society are the children of that society who belong to its culture and are part of its collective conscience.
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Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral.
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I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat.
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Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
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I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.
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I love physical kinds of comedy and getting down and dirty and doing stunts. When I was growing up, I was always getting into fights with guys and usually punching out boys my age because I was a lot bigger and tougher. So I'm naturally accustomed to putting myself into the headspace of a girl who can take care of herself.
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I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.
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Learning to read and write changes lives; it means jobs, money, health, and dreams fulfilled.
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If you hate the Jewish people, you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ.
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During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.
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Before I had my child, animals were my life. I slept with four dogs in my bed.
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When I was a child I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant. I suppose you have all sorts of thoughts as a child and at the time I figured that it was a way to avoid doing anything like going on stage.
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Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.
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If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.
