Ben Lerner Quotes
I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.

Quotes to Explore
-
Can you imagine being Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1400s trying to describe his ideas for machines that would allow humans to fly to the average person of his time? This is hundreds of years before the invention of electricity, the internal combustion engine, and many other things we take for granted today.
-
Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day.
-
In the South, there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln.
-
Within Internet users, you have a big chunk of people who can convert to online shopping.
-
Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.
-
Men fall in love with their eyes - they like what they see - and women fall in love with their ears - they like what they hear!
-
You should not do an autobiography if you want to tell the truth. There are a lot of things I know about people. If I can't say something good about a person, I don't want to say anything. And since I don't want to say anything bad, I won't write a book.
-
I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.
-
A funny thing happens in real estate. When it comes back, it comes back up like gangbusters.
-
The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story.
-
In lean times, you get plenty of sleep, and you're not flying around everywhere.
-
This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.
-
Humans can make friends easily if they are open to it and are interested in other people.
-
I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture or for a single moment on the red carpet. I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and relevance there, because that's what Mr. Christian Dior wanted.
-
Economic disasters or foolish wars are hardly guaranteed to bring about large-scale individual self-examination or renew the appeal of truly participatory democracy.
-
I would like to think I'm a good secret-keeper, when it comes to friends. I'm quite loyal like that.
-
The spirit of the four hobbits in 'Lord of the Rings,' I suppose I miss that.
-
But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.
-
Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
-
When I got depressed, I watched Bruce Lee movies. I learned everything from Bruce Lee.
-
We need a national focus on increasing the sustainable growth rate of our economy.
-
I prefer to play against the best players and the best teams and the best coaches. Never personal.
-
Humanity lives and always has lived on certain elemental provisions.
-
I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.