Ben Lerner Quotes
There were the usual exhortations to purity – think of the novel not as your opportunity to get rich or famous but to wrestle, in your own way, with the titans of the form – exhortations poets don’t have to make, given the economic marginality of the art, an economic marginality that soon all literature will share.
Quotes to Explore
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Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'
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I want some colleague to be free to come help me when I say the time has come. That's what I'm fighting for, me. Now that sounds selfish. And if it helps somebody else, so be it.
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Spending money is much more difficult than making money.
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I always fall in love with qualities of people I work with.
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Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.
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I've worked so hard for so long, and everyone's reaction has made me feel like... almost like they trust me, which is just a wonderful feeling. It pushes me to write things better and better.
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Everyone should change; otherwise, you can't grow as a person in life.
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I will come up with a project that will wipe out poverty in the Philippines in two years. I want to remove the people from economic crisis by using the Marcos wealth. Long after I'm gone, people will remember me for building them homes and roads and hospitals and giving them food.
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Public appearances are a headache. I hold mine down to a minimum.
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Films, fiction, can encompass a whole global vision on a particular subject with any story, whatever it is. You can play the story in whatever country with whatever language in whatever style you want to tell the story in.
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If I was sad or afraid, I would sit in a corner and sing. If I was happy I would jump into the middle of the room and sing. It was how I expressed my emotions.
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To be here recovers from a state of soul, from a state of mind. I have the memory of the heart. I know what I received. I must have the will to give back to others.
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We worked lightly even in the heaviest parts.
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When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.
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Generally, if I read something that I think is really good and that I feel a connection with and is right for me, I see and hear who the guy is, as manifested by me.
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My friends, who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you.
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I think it would be hard to go the distance in this business without a sense of humor.
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A great revolution is hardest of all on the great revolutionists.
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One of the lines from my books is about having respect for different minds, and if I had to have an epitaph at this point in my life, that would be it.
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Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee.
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The only albatross is the hurt you divine from what people say about your art
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The difference now is that the paparazzi get paid fortunes. That's what motivates people; it's about the money, sadly, at anyone's expense.
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There were the usual exhortations to purity – think of the novel not as your opportunity to get rich or famous but to wrestle, in your own way, with the titans of the form – exhortations poets don’t have to make, given the economic marginality of the art, an economic marginality that soon all literature will share.
