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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We become comfortable saying that there's nothing new, and then something like Malarky comes along, which is new and old and different and familiar, but ultimately itself, comfortable in its own skin, wise and smart and crazy-sexy or maybe sexy-crazy-well, you just have to read it to understand. It's a novel that sets its own course, sure and steady, even when it seems like it might be about to go over the edge of the world.
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I've had more fan mail from 'Doctor Who' than anything. People love the show so passionately.
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When you turn on your radio, you don't always want to hear about someone shootin' some person. Even if that's the lifestyle they live, people don't always want to hear it.
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People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.”
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There is only one legend. That's me.
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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.
