Teju Cole Quotes
It's an Obama book, certainly. I was delighted, and astonished, to hear recently that he was reading it. It's a book about a new kind of American reality, one that takes diversity for granted. It doesn't celebrate diversity, actually, it just says: this is how we live now.
Quotes to Explore
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There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.
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I have never found out that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the arts or sciences, and I have never been sufficiently interested in my 'family tree' to bother. My father and mother had come to America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland.
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Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.
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I don't understand why women journalists always ask women about motherhood? It's far more important and interesting for women to talk about their work, their thoughts, their creativity and their individual identity.
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Religion is the opium of the masses.
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Bragging about yourself violates norms of modesty and politeness - and if you were really competent, your work would speak for itself.
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I like politics. I like traveling in the United States.
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If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.
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I directed the men in our barque to approach near the savages, and hold their arms in readiness to do their duty in case they notice any movement of these people against us.
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If you can draw something from my life that helps, more power to you.
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But I'm very careful with opinions because I never know what the truth is. When I read what the press says about me, I don't really believe what it says about other people.
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Then you will do away with the only social meetings at the Art Academy in London we have, the only occasion on which we all come together in an easy, unrestrained manner. When we have no varnishing days, we shall not know one another.
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Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
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Reason is lost reasoning.
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One of the reasons why my album is called 'Forget the World' is because when you listen to the world, you make stupid mistakes.
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I am in love with stories of underdogs.
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In other words, New York has gone all suburban and bourgeois on us.
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I had such a supportive family, and I think that affects your life in such a profound way; it fortifies you completely.
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You know, the genders are different in how they approach things, and so I really think that women put a lot more guilt on themselves than need be.
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I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.
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I come from an alcoholic Irish background - I know where I was going! But I met my wife and started to practise Buddhism, which is a levelling experience for me, and there hasn't been a day I've missed in 40 years. I apply it to everything - to my work and relationships. I try to be a compassionate person.
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Higher unemployment generally bodes well for franchising. People are looking for a new opportunity, and people who have jobs are a little less confident they'll always have a job.
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There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will.
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It's an Obama book, certainly. I was delighted, and astonished, to hear recently that he was reading it. It's a book about a new kind of American reality, one that takes diversity for granted. It doesn't celebrate diversity, actually, it just says: this is how we live now.
