Bel Kaufman Quotes
Lady stand on line before me, speak English so good, like genius, in America only four years, I ashamed tell twenty-two years; I tell twenty!” To class she went only once. “I don’t go back,” she said emphatically. “Too foolish book, Dick and Jane.” She shrugged disdainfully. “Not Tolstoi!"
Quotes to Explore
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For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
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I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
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I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.
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I'm not going to break up my family, not for a book.
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In my downtime, you'll mostly find me curled up with a book. I love reading biographies. My favourites are those of Dalai Lama, Osama Bin Laden, and Einstein.
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I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.
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The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?
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You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
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If you write any kind of fiction about America, you immediately have to start doing some research about guns, so in some ways, 'Gun Machine' is just the culmination of 20 years of reading about guns.
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It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.
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I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.
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I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book. Actually, I always wanted to be in a comic book. I watched cartoons when I was a kid, too, and both comics and cartoons lit fire in my imagination. This realm holds a lot of interest for me, a lot of passion for me. So to be comic-ized, yeah, that's cool.
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Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season - and so memories stir and startle.
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The Small Faces are thought to be a one-hit wonder in America because we only had 'Itchycoo Park.' Then the Faces just had 'Stay with Me.' So both bands could be considered one-hit wonders in America, even though we had several huge hits in England.
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I was very, very sick when I was growing up in Russia. The ambulance constantly came to our house. I had horrible asthma that is easily treated in America, but they didn't even have inhalers back in Russia.
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I'd love to break America, like all artists do. It's a lot of work but, you know, it's got to be done!
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Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.
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America has always been a land of diversity, basically made up of immigrants, and that is something I want to see continued. It's something I'm proud of when people think of America.
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I like it when you have something happening by coincidence. Just something in a book is enough. But I prefer a fragment of an image so you are far more free to bring in elements of your own.
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The destiny of the colored American … is the destiny of America.
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That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
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I would never disrespect any man, woman, chick or child out there. We're all the same. What goes around comes around, and karma kicks us all in the butt in the end of the day.
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Lady stand on line before me, speak English so good, like genius, in America only four years, I ashamed tell twenty-two years; I tell twenty!” To class she went only once. “I don’t go back,” she said emphatically. “Too foolish book, Dick and Jane.” She shrugged disdainfully. “Not Tolstoi!"
