Stephen Spender (Sir Stephen Harold Spender) Quotes
A poet has to adapt himself, more or less consciously,to the demands of his vocation, and hence the peculiarities of poets and the condition of inspiration which many people have said is near to madness... The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration... a focusing of the attention in a special way.
Quotes to Explore
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Burroughs called his greatest novel 'Naked Lunch,' by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. Telling the truth. It's very difficult to do that in fiction because the whole process of writing fiction is a process of sidestepping the truth. I think he got very close to it, in his way, and I hope I've done the same in mine.
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Your mind is what makes everything else work.
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I have never thought of a full-fledged career in Bollywood because boxing has never left my mind. But you never know.
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Dancing has always been a passion of mine.
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The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.
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One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.
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I just like a good story. I want the story to be good, and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want.
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I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.
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The reason I dislike talking about the creative process is that I do have a creative process that is a winner and it's a sure thing.
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A writer has a difficult fate, but a Jewish writer has an especially difficult fate. His soul is torn; he lives on two streets with three languages. It is a misfortune to live on this sort of 'border,' and that is what I have experienced.
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Just as it got easier to use email, it will be easier to use Bitcoin as people invest in it and become more familiar with it.
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When you go on an audition it's very frightening.
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I want to go against the best fighters. That's why I'm always calling out Georges St-Pierre. I don't have anything against Georges St-Pierre. I think he's a great fighter.
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The nurses were all angels in my eyes.
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Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.
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Prospects of normalizing our relations with Russia look good.
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Wij leven allen, maar weten niet waarom en waarvoor, wij leven allen met het doel gelukkig te worden, we leven allen verschillend en toch gelijk.
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Seville never had a rich chess tradition. Valencia is entirely different, it is enough to say that one of the city squares is named after me.
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Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! Thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word.
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I've long stopped worrying about who invented whom - God man or man God.
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I had a great childhood, a very close-knit family. We were all overweight, and we had good times eating together, I imagine.
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You have got to pay attention, you have got to study and you have to do your homework. You have to score higher than everybody else. Otherwise, there is always somebody there waiting to take your place.
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If there is a problem somewhere, this is what happens. Three people will try to do something concrete to settle the issue. Ten people will give a lecture analyzing what the three are doing. One hundred people will commend or condemn the ten for their lecture. One thousand people will argue about the problem. And one person-only one- will involve himself so deeply in the true solution that he is too busy to listen to any of it. Now...which person are you?
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A poet has to adapt himself, more or less consciously,to the demands of his vocation, and hence the peculiarities of poets and the condition of inspiration which many people have said is near to madness... The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration... a focusing of the attention in a special way.
