Ilan Stavans Quotes

'The New World Haggadah' is meant for American Jews in the 21st century.

Ilan Stavans

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• American
• Jews

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  S. C. Gwynne
  • Fear
  • Space
  • Hurt

• At the end of the day, every decision I make about my music is about creating a collective.

  

  Halsey
  • Music
  • Day
  • Decision

• 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.

  

  Babe Ruth
  • Up
  • Women
  • Fun

• 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.

  

  Frances Farmer
  • School
  • True
  • Pretty

• I never had teenage years. I guess because I was seen to be more adult than anybody around me.

  

  Patrick Stewart
  • Me
  • Never
  • Guess

• Writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it.

  

  Tabitha King
  • Writing
  • Without
  • Cake

• 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.

  

  Dan O'Brien
  • World
  • Work
  • Winning

• I can do whatever I want.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • Want
  • I Can
  • Whatever

• I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • Time
  • Believe
  • Money

• I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

  

  Imogen Cunningham
  • People
  • Human
  • Turn

• 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.

  

  Yusef Komunyakaa
  • Important
  • Respect
  • Poetry

• 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.

  

  Carlos Ponce
  • Different
  • Community
  • Gay

• 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!'

  

  Langston Hughes
  • People
  • Mind
  • Art

• 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.

  

  Sammy Hagar Chickenfoot
  • Guy
  • Style
  • Guitar

• If one girl with courage is a revolution, imagine what feats we can achieve together.

  

  Queen Rania of Jordan
  • Together
  • Girl
  • Courage

• The very quick and high sales of the book caught us off guard, but fortunately we got the second edition from the printers at the end of last week and the shops should now be stocked again.

  

  Hansie Cronje
  • Book
  • High
  • End

• But when I go to Chicago, I know I'm home.

  

  Hank Sauer
  • Home
  • Know
  • Chicago

• President Johnson put destroyers in harm's way in the Tonkin Gulf not only once, but several times, with the, with a lot of his people hoping that it would lead to a confrontation and claiming that it had. And could have resulted in the lost of many lives in the course of it.

  

  Daniel Ellsberg
  • People
  • Lost
  • Lead

• My life changed irrevocably four-and-a-half years ago when my spine failed and collapsed. I spent two years on the floor, in excruciating, debilitating and unrelenting pain. I can only describe the pain as being submerged into a vat of scalding acid that has an electric current running through it. And you can never get out, ever.

  

  Bill Walton
  • Life
  • Running
  • Pain

• I believe in one God, the first and great cause of goodness. I also believe in Jesus Christ, the rebirth of the world. I also believe in the Holy Ghost, the comforter.

  

  Daniel Morgan
  • World
  • Great
  • God

• Clearly, border security has been the top domestic issue of the year, and rightly so. Securing our borders is an essential aspect of our national security.

  

  Randy Neugebauer
  • Security
  • Year
  • Top

• I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

  

  Alan Bates
  • Work
  • Career

• 'The New World Haggadah' is meant for American Jews in the 21st century.

  

  Ilan Stavans
  • World
  • American
  • Jews