Merle Travis Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I will say that a lot of songs that I've written are from my own personal experiences which are special to me.
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I love to draw and paint. I'm very active in that way, but I'm not very good with the written word, though.
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In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
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If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
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I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'
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The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.
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The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.
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I've learned... that just one person saying to me, 'You've made my day!' makes my day.
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Every cool riff has already been written by Black Sabbath. You're either playing it faster or slower or backwards, but they wrote it first.
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Slavery is what slavery's always been: About one person controlling another person using violence and then exploiting them economically, paying them nothing. That's what slavery's about
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The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
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I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.
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The fact that I have a lot of songs written doesn't keep me from wanting to write new ones, or new ones from coming.
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If you're a young person, like I used to be and you're at home and you're being called weird or different, I'm here to tell you your critics do not count. Their words will fade. You won't.
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I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life.
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If someone picks up one thing you've written, you want them to go, 'Wow, this is pretty good.'
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All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.
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The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
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Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again!
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When I grew up I saw females doing certain things, and I thought I had to do that exactly. The female rappers of my day spoke about sex a lot . . . and I thought that to have the success they got, I would have to represent the same thing. When in fact I didn’t have to represent the same thing.
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I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.
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Only way to eliminate the element of surprise is to know yourself and now your adversary.
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The saddest songs are written when a person is happy.
