William Boyd Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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At 21 years old, I could produce 400 people like that.
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I don't choose to make movies as small as the movies I've made. The combined budget of my two films is far under $5 million, but it's just by necessity that it ends up being that way.
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I'm from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions - very primitive.
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Reason cannot calm the storm of emotion, and emotion usually wins, until it settles down and allows reason to rise again and apologize on behalf of it.
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What is extraordinary about contemporary art is the energy - it has our energy. New energy. Pieces hundreds of years old are beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, but without our modern energy.
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I don't feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there's something that I really did do. I believe I'm just ordinary. And I'd like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.
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Give the peasants neither life nor death.
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In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.
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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
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This is America, not a banana republic.
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I'm not terribly confrontational, but I've gotten better at holding my ground.
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I was at a book convention, in a cab. On one side of me was Arthur Schlesinger; on the other side was William Manchester - real heavyweights. All they were doing was asking me about Charles Manson. The only thing that enables me not to be bored is the people talking about it - they're so interested.
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I think that dwelling on other people's perception of you is the road to complete madness, unfortunately. I try and resist that.
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Sometimes you look at a movie and you can see that the actor or actress said, 'I'm taking this onboard because I'm making a ton of money, and not because it's going to be something special.'
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Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.
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Likewise, education can direct people toward good or evil ends. When education is based on a fundamentally distorted worldview, the results are horrific.
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Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
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I'm going to be shaking my booty when I'm 55.
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Everyone I've ever played has been flawed.
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People deal with models like they are children. They think they can pull one over on you. It's actually funny. I'm always like, I'm about to pull something on you, and you're so focused on thinking I'm dumb, you're not even going to know.
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The mistake that people make in stand-up is thinking they're profound or they're deep when there are so many people who have more worthwhile ways of phrasing things.
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Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.
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You can fit two United States and maybe a third one into the entire continent of Africa, but on a map we make the entire continent of Africa look like the size of the United States, which is why a lot of people don't know that Africa is a continent. They think it's a country because it looks as big as we do.
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I don't think they'll ever make a retro Bond.
