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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Word of mouth travels faster than anything else.
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The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
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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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There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.
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... it's a tough thing having to step aside for a friend, when your heart's breaking and your nether parts are still tangled up in their base desires.
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It [making tron: Legacy movie] was everything. I got pulled into a different country, in a different language, and a different society. In a movie, it's a completely different feel. In car design you know you have one year, and you have to go step by step. This is an organized catastrophe.
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When I recorded for Columbia, I could usually do anything in one take...I would invariably want to use the first take because that would be the one that was spontaneous and fresh.
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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.
