Eugene H. Peterson Quotes
I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.
Quotes to Explore
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I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.
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I really tend to write in retrospect.
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It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.
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I understand the desire to write and read about the death of publishing. It's a perversely and universally appealing topic.
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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I really don't have anything urgent to say, and I think you shouldn't write unless you have something urgent to say. Sometimes that troubles me, and sometimes I don't really care.
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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I was always falling in love at a very young age - kindergarten is when I can remember. There was always a crush. And when I was in sixth grade, I started picking up guitar, so I started wanting to write about it and sing about it.
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My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.
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In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
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If I had to rank my skills, I have a long way to go before I can write a good graphic novel.
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If you can write it, I can be it.
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I don't order laws, I propose them.
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If I write something, and I'm going to put in all that love and energy, I want to direct it.
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I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don't like to read.
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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
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I don't write books inadvertently.
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There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.
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So now that the illusion of infinite growth is being exposed, the corresponding ballooning entitlements that enticed the larger public to become complicit in the illusion are becoming unglued.
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I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"
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Islam doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Africa. And violence plays a particularly critical role in places where statehood is weak at best, such as the Maghreb.
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I have been gigging around Glasgow and Edinburgh since I was 12. I played in pubs at that age, even though I obviously was too young to be in them. So I used to hide in bathrooms, come out and play my set, then get the hell out as quickly as possible.
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I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.
