Ishmael Reed Quotes
No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.
Quotes to Explore
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Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
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I can't say anything I don't love about Seattle.
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I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies.
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Food can change anything.
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I read Carver. Julio Cortazar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
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I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
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I don't fear anything now.
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I love bookstores and booksellers. In my novel 'Dirty Martini,' I thanked over 3,000 booksellers by name in the back matter.
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When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.
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I don't do anything just 'cause nothing else is happening, or for money.
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I don't want to be known as the Hilton heiress, because I didn't do anything for that.
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Lebanon is a Syrian protectorate. The Lebanese dare not do anything without the approval of Damascus.
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Would I have traded 'Homeland' for anything else? No. Would I trade 'Billions' for anything else? No.
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I'd never discuss anything confidential.
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I don't think anybody ever saw anybody taking anything.
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Anything I do, I want to do it well.
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I don't like to dabble in anything I don't do well. I don't talk politics.
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Above anything else, I hate to lose.
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How about the one who searches so urgently he does not see anything else.
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Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one.
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And whenever I saw Luis, Graça's husband, I dealt with him with a friendship that was quite genuine, since it was offered out of gratitude for Graça's love.
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The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great nerve center from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over us, or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time.
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No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.
