Ethan Canin Quotes
Books were king, but now movies are king, and books are sort of ignored. So now there's no sense of a welcoming community where you live.
Quotes to Explore
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I actually think I have an audience member's sensibility about going to the movies.
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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
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I don't think about who the audience is for my books.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
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I've always been a huge fan of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movies.
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I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'
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People talk about Hollywood as a myth, but in reality, when you make Icelandic movies and you want to get them distributed in the U.S., you're not really working with Hollywood. The movies I've been making, the first one I made, I made it with Working Title, but it was financed through Universal, so it became a Hollywood production.
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Travel teaches as much as books.
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My daughter's dabbling in showbiz, and she's done a few commercials. She's auditioned for some movies and shows, so I'm letting her pursue that. I'm OK with it.
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Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.
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I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it's not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting.
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I used to always sing my way into the movies and the basketball games or whatever. I'd sing for whoever's on the door, and they'd let me in. I used to think I was Nat King Cole back in the day, you know. So I'd sing something like, 'Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you,' and they'd let me in.
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Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
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I go to New York to see live shows, not movies.
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Twitter is fun because it lets me stay in touch with all my original readers who grew up with my books. I love hearing from readers instantly on Twitter.
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I do read a lot. I read more than I watch movies.
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Brad Pitt has something about him to where he's played different characters in all his movies, and every single time after he's done, I want to be him.
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Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
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As [Martin Luther] King said, it never cost anybody a dime to integrate the lunch counters. When you start talking about trying to deal with jobs and hunger and things that require investment, then that's really the tough stuff, because everybody wants to do right if it doesn't cost them anything.
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I don't know if it is of any joy to humiliate people. No matter what, whether you're high in life or low in life, humiliation and such kinds of things should just be ignored. I don't derive any pleasure from running people down.
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I did a play called 'On Golden Pond' in a dinner theater in Maine and then went to New York for a talent competition having put together a three-man juggling routine and some one-liners and I got myself an agent from that.
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The retirement age needs to be raised. A portion of Social Security ought to be privatized, if not all. And there probably needs to be some means testing. It's a Ponzi scheme that's not sustainable.
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I was so scared of the water when I was little. I used to grab onto Mum's hand to get out of the pool. I did not even want to shower.
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Books were king, but now movies are king, and books are sort of ignored. So now there's no sense of a welcoming community where you live.
