Ralph Ellison Quotes
Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in.
Quotes to Explore
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I've lost fights before where I'm landing more punches and I'm moving away from the guy. So, the way that they score things at the end doesn't seem very consistent to me.
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Hollywood is the only thing more ridiculous than Silicon Valley. There's nowhere else where it's stranger.
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It's not that that I'm not comfortable being naked, but when you grow up fat, you can't take away the shame or embarrassment even though you're a model. It's not just erased.
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There are parallels between the music and film worlds, but they're really very different. I feel like they're just two different ways to channel my creativity.
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Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
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To make theater out of real life, you need to catch dialogue when it happens.
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But I was losing so much bone density that I would have been in grave danger. And I mean grave danger. If I had let it go just a few more years I could have broken my hip or spine just picking up my granddaughter.
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Effective teacher support in my mind is the same thing as effective management. Our teachers need strong management, just like anyone in any profession.
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I like school very much, and I'll go to college if my career slows down. But kids go to college to be where I am today. Not to put college down, but for me, it would be digressing.
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I do endorse brands: brands that I believe in individually, brands that I use, brands that I am proud to sell. But I wouldn't do that for my films because that's something I do separately. What I do with my films is something I am extremely passionate about.
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We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice.
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What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
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It is long overdue that we have a woman as a legitimate contender for the White House. But Hillary Clinton is the definition of the establishment so many are determined to reject.
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I don't think that VR is going to lead to humanity being enslaved in the matrix or letting the world crumble around us. I think it's going to end up being a great technology that brings closer people together, that allows for better communication, that reduces a lot of environmental waste that we're currently doing in the real world.
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What people tell me they take away from my books is that they can shape their lives, they can achieve their own dreams. And certainly that's what I want them to take away.
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When I work for someone else, I always make money for them. When I back my own ideas, I am bound to lose.
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I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.
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We fall in love more deeply when we're unhappy.
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These are dangerous days we live in and you, the artists, are our last defense.
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When people like your music because it has vulnerable honesty, and you're able to comfortably admit to flaws and imperfections, then that's the most liberating thing about being an artist.
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Once we played for the Princess of Monaco in Paris. We were the biggest ducks ever, wearing rented tuxedos. We trashed the party, took a bunch of girls and champagne in limos underneath the Eiffel Tower, and set up an acoustic show. It was like a Hilary Duff movie.
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Everybody else goes out and plays a show as if it's their album, which is boring. I'd rather sit at home and listen to the album, because I hate to be in a smoke-filled, loud room - that's not enjoyable for me at all...I always look up to guys who can sit and do dinner music...they're singing in tune and playing somebody else's music, and I don't think I could do that...it's the shittiest job in the world.
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Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in.
