William Jay Smith Quotes
I have published so many books in so many years. I can't complain about any lack of attention. But I've never been placed as a Southern writer, which I really am. So I was happy finally to be published by someone in the South.
Quotes to Explore
-
My father was a very gregarious, very open guy. So every weekend, the house was full of people.
-
When I was a teenager, I was an umpire for a competitive league for 8- to 9-year-olds. I was really bad at it because I didn't know all the rules, and all these kids were better athletes than me. I made a bad call, and this dad snapped on me. Then he dumped his trash from his cooler, and I had to kick him out of the stands.
-
I find myself so easily discouraged. It is pathetic how easily I can be discouraged - easily discouraged by resistance, easily discouraged by opposition, easily discouraged by hardness of heart, easily discouraged by blindness.
-
I was going to go to college and graduate and move to New York and do the Broadway thing. That's where a lot of my influences vocally and writing come from. Then I did some covers, and towards the end of college, I saw it was a path I could take. I wrote more pop music.
-
The trip to Iraq confirmed that I made the right decision when I voted against lending Iraq the $18 billion the United States plans to use to help rebuild the country.
-
We cannot let our respect for the FBI blind us from the fact the FBI has sometimes come up short of our expectations.
-
I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across.
-
I tried the broadcasting thing, the coaching thing, but I'll never replace the competitive feeling of being out on the field when we were players.
-
Space excites me. My dream is to go to space.
-
I like somebody who's not so crazy but likes to have a good time... and who is thoughtful and kind and easy to laugh with. Somebody you can just be yourself with one hundred and fifty percent.
-
A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.
-
You never know what movie I will be in next, but let's just hope it's sells (for my sake at least)!
-
If you start believing all that press about you, you're in trouble. I don't even read my reviews.
-
It's beneficial to play against your type; to be chameleon-like.
-
Real people - the interesting ones, anyway - don't remain static, and neither do the ones I write about. Changes take place, and they react to them.
-
Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!
-
When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.
-
It's probably easier and cheaper to counterfeit hundred-dollar bills than it is to counterfeit Bitcoin.
-
Even though Haitian women are considered the 'poto mitan' - the 'central pillars' of the family and their communities - they are often the most underserved members of already poor communities.
-
When I was a kid and started to be obsessed by art in the 1980s, the art world was in this polarity Warhol/Beuys, Beuys/Warhol. Both expended the notion of art extremely, but in very different ways.
-
I'm married to a white man, and then my daughter came out looking like the whitest white child with blonde hair and blue eyes. And I'm like, 'Omigosh, now what am I going to do?' She has my mom's features and is lighter than my husband. And my boy is browner than I am. Brown eyes and really tan.
-
Rewrite your major goals every day, in the present tense, exactly as if they already existed
-
I have published so many books in so many years. I can't complain about any lack of attention. But I've never been placed as a Southern writer, which I really am. So I was happy finally to be published by someone in the South.
