William Dean Howells (The Dean of American Letters) Quotes
It is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.
Quotes to Explore
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When I initially moved to the city, I had to stay in hotels for almost two years. I was fed up of that life, and it was then that I decided that I wanted a home in the city, so I shifted base permanently.
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Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.
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I couldn't do any of my other characters, you know? But I could have done the lady. Church Lady's Malibu Beach party is an idea I have for a movie, too. Yes.
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I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.
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I got into retailing because I wanted a real job.
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When I first got to L.A., I thought every person in a limo was a star.
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Literature gives us a window into other people's experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood.
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I like to emphasize my eyes because if I do it well enough, then they look very blue.
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My grandad was a miner. My father, brother, and uncles all work in industry.
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To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.
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E-mails, phone calls, Web sites, videos. They're still all letters, basically, and they've come to outnumber old-fashioned conversations. They are the conversation now.
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In order for sensation to accede to the objectivity of things, it must itself be changed into a thing. The agent of change is language: the sensations are turned into verbal objects.
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At the end of the 1970s, I was a young researcher at the Weizmann Institute with an ambitious plan to shed light on one of the major outstanding questions concerning living cells: the process of protein biosynthesis.
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I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.
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Having learnt my basics in theatre, I always feel film is a collaborative effort. If you do your part well and help the person in front of you in realising his or her potential, the film invariably comes out good.
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I lost a girlfriend when I was in my 30s. She was 46. It all sounds so trite, but I put a Post-it on my dressing-room wall. It said, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. This moment is a gift, which is why it's called the present.'
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Any time you're a poster child for the CIA, there are a lot of people that are - either have ideological or they are mentally unbalanced - that are going to try to find you and perhaps cause you harm.
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I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.
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I want to make sure the people we elect to office believe in America.
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If the weather is nice, I play tennis, which is pretty much the only exercise that I do. I try to do that as much as I can.
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One does not allow the plumbers to decide the temperature, depth and timing of a bath.
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In New York, everyone's really neurotic and talks about themselves all the time.
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The fact that my mother's life was cut short is something that pushes me to always move forward and live the best life I possibly can. In a way, I feel like I can take her along with me through every experience, and in that sense, her beautiful energy and spirit will live on.
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It is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.
