Teju Cole Quotes
For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
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It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.
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Never forget that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression - with investors, with customers, with PR, and with marketing.
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Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
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One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.
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I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
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There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
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A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.
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I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I'm used to doing.
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There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
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After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
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Our job as friends, mentors, parents, and writing coaches is not to write anyone's college essay. That's cheating. Plus, it sends a discouraging message to the teenager that he or she can't be trusted with this important assignment. Trust the student to write the essay, but verify that it gets done. Gentle editing and proofreading are allowed.
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R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.
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Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.
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All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
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I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.
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I started playing video games, and in 1978 I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and started game-mastering and writing my own adventures and creating my own worlds.
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The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.
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Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for 'Pop' magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.
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I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?
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I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean - because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we're all the same.
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There's something kind of horrific about milk. Think about it! Think about what we're doing. Milk is kind of gross.
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For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.
