William Bolcom Quotes

I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

William Bolcom

• Process
• Retrospect
• Composing

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Quotes to Explore

• I'm a mother of three. I don't really have the time to put very elaborate outfits together, so I keep it casual but dress it up with shoes, a bag, and jewellery.

  

  Camila Alves
  • Up
  • Time
  • Together

• There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

  

  Hannes Alfven
  • Time
  • Universe
  • Doubt

• It is not true that I dictate what should be done. There is a dialogue.

  

  Ferdinand Marcos
  • Done
  • True
  • Dialogue

• I've only twice in my life come across someone with both high IQ and high EQ naturally; and that was because their parents were super high EQ, and the parents just EQ'd the hell out of them. They're inevitably very successful because now you've got someone who's sharper than the average person and well-rounded, too.

  

  Walter O'Brien
  • Life
  • High
  • Parents

• It's pretty hard to make out what's going to be a commercial success and what's not.

  

  Gavin Rossdale Bush
  • Pretty
  • Success
  • Going

• In some sense, what you might have suspected from the first day of high-school chemistry is true: The periodic table is a colossal waste of time. Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen, the first element and the major constituent of stars. The other 10 percent of all atoms are helium.

  

  Sam Kean
  • Time
  • School
  • True

• I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

  

  H. G. Bissinger
  • Power
  • Know
  • Sometimes

• Respect for women was a very important part of my upbringing.

  

  Sam Hunt
  • Important
  • Women
  • Respect

• If I can put it together, I've got an opportunity to win.

  

  Katarina Johnson-Thompson
  • Together
  • Opportunity
  • Win

• I grew up in a hippie commune so I have a real hippie part of me.

  

  Patricia Arquette
  • Me
  • Part
  • Grew

• Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • Want
  • Words
  • You

• I wasn't a very good student in elementary school and had a hard time with reading and writing.

  

  Patricia Polacco
  • Time
  • Good
  • Writing

• I prefer doing interviews where people don't have to interpret what you say. I'm going to be real honest.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • People
  • Real
  • Doing

• I may be a star in the South, but when I go to Bollywood, I am a clean slate, a white paper. Whatever the director makes of me is what I will become for the audience.

  

  Ram Charan
  • Star
  • Audience
  • Director

• In a city like New York, any night can be completely different, even in a subtle way.

  

  Nate Ruess Fun.
  • Different
  • Night
  • City

• I view Bitcoin as the more democratic version of money and value transfer because no one controls it... I expect the Internet to be around longer than any nation-state, so a nation-state-backed currency is actually less safe than an Internet currency in my mind.

  

  Olaf Carlson-Wee
  • Mind
  • Money
  • Value

• I think one of my first jokes - in the black community, there's people who have jokes about skin tone. People like, 'You so black, you purple.' 'You so black, you gotta smile so we can see you at night.'

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • People
  • Night
  • Black

• Autonomy was shopped to us. We looked at the price and thought it was absurdly high.

  

  Larry Ellison
  • High
  • Thought
  • Price

• Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present - not where we wish we were, or where we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact.

  

  Thomas Sowell
  • Wish
  • Facts
  • Achieve

• As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

  

  Isaac Newton
  • Idea
  • Blind
  • Colors

• Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we’re done with this world, but a single person’s 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh’s pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag.

  

  Edward Humes
  • Lifetime
  • Americans
  • Track

• I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

  

  William Bolcom
  • Process
  • Retrospect
  • Composing