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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Whatever is original in my writing comes from my musical apprenticeship. I look for rhythm in words. I imagine words as if they were musical chords. Often I'll write something, read it, and find it musically unsatisfactory. There is a musical imperative in my choice of words.
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Wrapped around my son with only the knowledge of the words of the world & a quiet remembrance of watching before this all began.
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Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state.
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I'm a businessman. I work for business people. The kind of thing they say is: Now we've sold a lot of records, let's sell some more.
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The biggest problem for badminton is wind direction and lighting. If those problems are not solved, it seriously impacts players' performances on the court. If a high-level player's performance is affected by these factors, they suffer setbacks and cannot be fully satisfied on the court.
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Words command us. Names define us. Definitions bind us. Words are where we keep our sacred secrets.
