Henry Louis Gates Quotes
The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.
Quotes to Explore
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I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.
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In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.
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My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. I've lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe I've lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending.
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In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.
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I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.
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I don't like attacking.
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I had studied theater for three years in London when someone suggested me for the role.
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The man who practises unselfishness, who is genuinely interested in the welfare of others, who feels it a privilege to have the power to do a fellow-creature a kindness - even though polished manners and a gracious presence may be absent - will be an elevating influence wherever he goes.
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A war still rages over the legacy of the 1960s.
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Art is that which comes to a man, and stands between himself and an implacable witness: the work.
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Limitations can be hugely creative and hugely inspiring - so long as they are the ones you choose for yourself. I will not allow anyone to take anything off my palette, but if I do, then within that, I can be creative.
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No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
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Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.
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Of course we are coming to invest in Germany - that is certain. Most airplanes in the fleet of Qatar Airways are from Airbus.
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I hate to wait. When I want something, I want it now.
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I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
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Are we really so far from the Victorians? Much of what our society holds important was shaped in the 19th century.
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Good Lord, I went in for a check up the other day and the doctor said 'You need to lay off eggs.' I go 'Is my cholesterol bad?' He said 'No, your farts are killing everybody in this room.'
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I think you can't really escape any kind of spiritual education as a child, whether it's New Age or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever it is. You can't escape it, even if you completely disagree with it, you still have it as a foundation that you base things off of.
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If all I hired were cake decorators, our cakes would just look like cakes that people decorate. We do astounding work at Charm City Cakes and to do that you need people who think in astounding ways. Artists just think in different ways.
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Why is it that people with the most narrow of minds seem to have the widest of mouths?
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I've always had problems with guys!
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Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself like that? Why didn't anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a war? Why? Why? Why?
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The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.
