Ishmael Reed Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
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I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
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They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
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Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.
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Arendt did have a certain snobbishness, though in some of her writing she expressed more democratic attitudes.
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Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
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Tell your idea to whomever will listen, and you'll get valuable market feedback before writing a single line of code.
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When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.
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All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
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Music has always been a huge passion in my life. I've just had such success with my acting that it's really been right alongside of it, and I've always been writing and playing and singing.
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I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
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Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books.
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Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.
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Imagination is an infinite resource that cannot be diminished by overuse or underuse.
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I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
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I started writing my own things when I was about 8.
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Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.
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One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a short or long time, no matter how close the relationship was, they become like characters in fiction.
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Spielberg is our hero. For him to make a nod to 'Godzilla' just before we make our movie is like getting the king to acknowledge you at dinner.
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The difference between people isn't in their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets ideas, and from the common people--life itself, warmth. You feel their hates and loves.
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Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to say, I tend towards the roles of planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results.
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Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.
