Ilan Stavans Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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This is who I am: a flyspeck of human vanity in a trillion miles of stone-dead interstellar space; a graceless lump of flesh and fear in a remote desert where nearly everything that I can see or touch is designed to hurt me.
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At the end of the day, every decision I make about my music is about creating a collective.
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I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.
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Warren Beatty once told me that if someone's really stuck on you, find them their next boyfriend. But I could never do that.
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The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.
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I never had teenage years. I guess because I was seen to be more adult than anybody around me.
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I am not the only intense or intellectual cricketer. I played with other cricketers who could be pretty intense and intellectual.
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Writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it.
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Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite moment as a decathlete was winning the Olympic gold medal. It was a lot of years of work, and when I won it, it was more a sense of relief than jubilation or exaltation.
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I can do whatever I want.
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I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.
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When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
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I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.
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A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
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I must be honest here; I don't think there's such a thing as 'unconventional' when it comes to YA. YA readers are the most open-minded in the literary world. They'll read anything.
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Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.
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I'd say it's even harder to cater to Hispanics than to the lesbian or gay community. We're so culturally separated: Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Venezuelans. We're all so different.
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To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'
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It's hard to say this about a guy like Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but he's really limited to a style and they're locked into it.
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That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?
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Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.
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If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.
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McLeavy: I'm innocent. (A little unsure of himself, the beginnings of panic) Doesn't that mean anything to you?
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'The New World Haggadah' is meant for American Jews in the 21st century.
