William Boyd Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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What novels do that biographies don't is get at truths by penetrating the facts, by going deeper to what's underneath fact, through invention.
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The Lebanese people voted this time for change. So they are not satisfied with the actual situation. They want to see a new government. They want to see a new vision.
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I was a tomboy.
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Golf is played with the arms.
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I can't take the theater side out of myself.
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I was 12 years old when I had my first job, delivering packages.
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Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.
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I was famous from the age of 13, and after a while you become immune to it - in a good way. You look at positives and what you can do with it.
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Since the dawn of recorded music, every generation has felt shocked by the musical tastes of the next.
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I hardly ever write when I'm just feeling great.
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I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. Then you can edit or mess around with what they've come up with. But you have to allow the artist that space.
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There's a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there's a time when one has to step up... to set the organization back on the right direction.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule.
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Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.
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I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it.
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I know that there are many things I could do, but I'm not interested. It's more important to be loving and to have a lively mind.
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Factoring in millions of people when I'm writing a song is not a good idea. I don't ever do it.
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I remember bringing some of my other friends to our table, and everyone at our table would look at them and ask me, 'What are you doing? Why'd you bring him?' It was annoying high school stuff that still goes on now. My high school was really bad.
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As an actor, I know immediately if I'm saying a word that doesn't feel right coming out of my mouth, and I know how to change it. But as a director watching something, or even as a writer reading a script, sometimes it's not always clear what needs to be fixed.
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Carving is a source of joy to the artist. . . . To attack the raw material, gradually to extract a shape out of it following one's own desire, or, sometimes, the inspiration of the material itself: this gives the sculptor great joy.
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When you're on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they're actually there, but most of the time you can't tell the difference from the two.
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Once you are labeled 'the best' you want to stay up there, and you can't do it by loafing around.
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Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.
