William Trevor Quotes
The capacity you're thinking of is imagination; without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.
Quotes to Explore
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For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary.
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I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.
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I get 0.5 seconds to react to a ball, sometimes even less than that. I can't be thinking of what XYZ has said about me. I need to surrender myself to my natural instincts. My subconscious mind knows exactly what to do. It is trained to react. At home, my family doesn't discuss media coverage.
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Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
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When you're first reading the script and thinking about playing the part, it's slightly daunting. It's easy to question, 'Is an audience going to like me? And is that my job?'
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The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.
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Without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results.
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Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined 'free market' is the first step towards understanding capitalism.
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Anyone in the humor business isn't thinking clearly if he doesn't surround himself with idea people. Otherwise, you settle for mediocrity - or you burn yourself out.
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I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.
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My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!
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An auctioneer is such a uniquely American thing. I keep thinking in my head, perhaps it's not as American as I think, but it feels so Southern. It feels so American. Like, hundreds of years of American tradition is involved in it.
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There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
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Google owns YouTube, and recently, I drew a comic about an idea for a YouTube feature - which they actually took seriously and implemented. So I'm thinking that maybe we'll have a future where Google is 'xkcd.'
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What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.
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If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.
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My understanding of environmentalism, of the things that radicalize people, of the ethics and effectiveness of different kinds of social protest have definitely become more nuanced and more informed, but they aren't much clearer.
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Egocentricity: The vanity that makes you wonder what people are thinking about you when they are really wondering what you are thinking about them.
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My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania.
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We all should know what the Right's agenda is here: privatize education, kill public schools, and transfer the teaching of the young to private entities.
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Atrocities are now shown in 30-second bites. Hardcore artistic horror is an expression of hating your neighbour. The gruesome imagination feeds on vanity, lust, self-indulgence and despair, rather than the hope of the Holy Spirit. The Body of Christ needs to look and repent of our own fallenness.... Whatever arena Christians withdraw from goes to hell.
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The capacity you're thinking of is imagination; without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.
