Hal Duncan Quotes
Words command us. Names define us. Definitions bind us. Words are where we keep our sacred secrets.
Quotes to Explore
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One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.
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The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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It's important to have good tunes, but words are the thing for me.
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Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.
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I guess I was just meant to be a secretary who doesn't take shorthand. I'm a lousy typist, too - 33 words a minute.
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The words I overuse are all adverbs.
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I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths.
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What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.
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It caused more problems as a young kid, because the simple process of perceiving words on a piece of paper was hard for me. Many people think dyslexic people see things backwards. They don't see things backwards.
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The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read.
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Tone matters more than words.
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If you want to understand Jesus, you have to study the whole Bible. Christian duty is not defined solely by the words in red.
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I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.
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The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
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People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it's a really unstoppable combination.
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Words are all we have.
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To sing is to bring to life; impossible if the words are mediocre, however good the music.
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The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.
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I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.
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The children should never be excluded from what I am doing and should never have the feeling of being part of an audience.
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Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds. The way for people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away.
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Words command us. Names define us. Definitions bind us. Words are where we keep our sacred secrets.
