Ben Lerner Quotes
I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.
Quotes to Explore
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You have to make the mistakes and have those failures in order to learn from them and grow and improve... But for me, the best way to combat any of that beating yourself up or overanalysing, the most important part is always to be prepared to the best of your ability.
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I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.
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We run around so much - with the best intentions: I want to save the rain forest. I've gotta clean up the oceans. I've gotta save the dolphins. All worthy efforts, but if you're not centered and you don't have the serenity in your life you need to accomplish that task, you're not going to do a very good job.
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The job of mayor and Governor is becoming more and more like the job of university president, which I used to be; it looks like you are in charge, but you are not.
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Well it was sent to me, well because almost everything that is written in Baltimore is sent to me. And David Simon, who was a writer for the Baltimore Sun, spent one year following the homicide squad in Baltimore and he chronicled that period of time.
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From a very early age, I made my decisions based on careers that I admire. The one thing that all the actresses I love have in common is that they have diversity in their careers.
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The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.
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The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.
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People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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If I don't go to the gym for a week, I just get thinner and thinner.
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If someone comes up to me, 90 percent of the time it's about Office Space.
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Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky.
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I would say that I am a poor Christian; I'm not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.
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Today the people from my State of Tennessee would listen to this debate, or even talk about a reference to God on our money or in the Halls of Congress or in our Pledge and say, please, let common sense and logic win the day and prevail versus legal mumbo jumbo.
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I love musical theater so much. When done right, I think comedy songs can be the most efficient form of joke delivery. Songs can be the most efficient and the best forms of conveying emotion. Music is universal. It's worldwide.
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We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers.
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I'm dreaming of sleeping next to you and feeling like a lost little boy in a brand new town I'm counting my sheep and each one that passes is another dream to ashes And they all fall down. - Sleeping to Dream
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Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.
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We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more. Even Vagabond - it was a fiction but it was really a documentary. I mean, it has the texture of documentary. Even if I made up every line, it has the texture of being true.
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Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
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Now however, we have contraception and it's mostly reliable so you can have sex without that happening. So then you start vilifying the act of sex itself. I don't think Buddhism has ever done that necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of Buddhism taking the stance that Christianity often has which says that sex itself is a kind of evil act, which is a really weird idea.
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I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.
