Thomas Mallon Quotes
I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
Quotes to Explore
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I was a confused young girl with so much tragedy. Sometimes when you're going through stuff, the last person you're thinking exists is God. I mean, it was my confusion, the anger that was in my heart, all that drama. But thank God I know God now, okay?
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You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
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Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went.
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Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.
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For the price of a couple of Happy Meals, you can buy a digital textbook and stop your child from having to carry around a six-pound book.
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On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.
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I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.
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I went to drama school in England, and you spend your first year working on the muscles surrounding the vocal mechanisms. You learn how you support it and create characters through your voice so that became an obsession. So I went to Hollywood thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to be one of the great voice-over artists.'
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I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.
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As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.
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The Internet's impact is immense. My students can't imagine ever paying for a book.
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Terrorists are people, too - they are given to error. Naipaul and then DeLillo do a good job in their novels of drawing this out: I'm thinking of DeLillo's contention in 'Mao II' that terrorists have replaced writers as the people who 'alter the inner-life of the culture.' I thought that was marvellous!
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
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China has The Bomb. ... Sometime in the future-25, 50, 75 years hence-what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too. That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.
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What's drinking?A mere pause from thinking!
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The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.
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I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.
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All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.
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I will respect the limits of my experience but that won't stop me from trying to lead by example of my work. Being a good teammate and picking them up on and off the field is a simple goal of mine.
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Early in my career I was accused of being overconfident and even cocky, but I really was confident that I had done the training and didn't see any other reason to say otherwise.
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While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lead to only a three-year increase in life expectancy at birth.
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There was a way that I approached that with the art department and the background players, which was that I didn't want people to have stepped out of a catalogue. This is not a world of perfect beauty. I wanted it to be the real world of the 1960s. I know that some women walked out of the house without lipstick.
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Although abortion has been legal nationwide for more than a quarter century, access remains difficult for many women.
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I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
