Alan Brinkley Quotes
Compression is a tremendous challenge. Five paragraphs on a topic is a lot for all but the most important issues.

Quotes to Explore
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I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.
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One is that we stand - my two confreres and I - in some degree as representatives of a great number of fellow workers over the entire world, who are enthusiastically active in this field of ours.
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The box office has become global. I think that factors in to the question of how to portray different ethnicities and cultures.
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I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.
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Any effort to create a second class of Americans, I just can't swallow that.
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I love gardening, and I love cooking. I love things like that. I love creating things.
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I'm mostly vegetarian.
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I loved when my dad was home. He liked to sit in the living room and watch boxing and baseball on TV. Or he'd be tinkering around or listening to records by his musician buddies - George Shearing, Oscar Peterson and the Jackie Gleason Orchestra.
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Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power.
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Trent likes to record guitars direct, whereas I've always preferred playing through an amplifier.
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If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
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Mass layoffs produce big winners and losers. Most workers who remain are financially unscathed, even though their employer is struggling.
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What feels most productive to me isn't to think so much in terms of how I can be alternative, but how I can be subversive in a way that feels organic, how I can connect with people, and how I can just be myself, which may be the hardest thing to be.
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'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers.
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Whatever you see - any good results - are all from the pressure.
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There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.
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People don't know how to behave in public anymore.
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I believe that this idea of story or myth or this thing that Joseph Campbell writes about is sort of an inter-connective spiritual force - like The Force in 'Star Wars' - where it doesn't matter where you were raised, or what your background is, there are certain elements of story that totally appeal to you.
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Curiosity begins as an act of tearing to pieces or analysis.
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We're not going to pay attention to the silliness and the petty comments. And quite frankly, women have joined me in this effort, and so it's not about appearances. It's about effectiveness.
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Some books are a revelation. They come along at just the right time for just the right reasons. They become heart books and soul books.
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I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.
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Compression is a tremendous challenge. Five paragraphs on a topic is a lot for all but the most important issues.