Ricky Jay Quotes
I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.

Quotes to Explore
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I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
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The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
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Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.
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I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.
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I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.
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I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
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Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.
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I'm always up for going back to the stage.
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I love being a mom. But there's a certain kind of tedium to your life when your kid is young. Writing allows you to wander when your kid is napping in a crib ten feet away. So that's the great joy of writing fiction for me.
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Writing can be a very solitary profession, and when deadlines are looming, it's tempting to glue myself to my desk, but I try to make sure I get out a few times a month with friends just so I don't forget what it means to be social.
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I'm a pretty easygoing person, and it bleeds into the music. Even if I'm writing the most personal song, it's not going to come out totally serious; there's always a little tongue in the cheek.
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While I'm writing, I'm also the first reader, and I want to write a book where I'm excited about what happens next.
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By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.
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You should live in a manner that should enable you to devote time to writing and contemplation. As is often said, the writer is at work even when he is simply looking out the window.
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The world isn't going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young.
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There's no better satisfaction than writing. I feel that writing is the best and everything else comes with it.
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All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.
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I had heard about the nightcrawling world, and I'm very aware that there are tens of millions of young people around the world who are facing bleak employment prospects.
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Chanel is a very important vendor for Neiman Marcus. My favorite thing is the way they finish off the hems on dresses and jackets.
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American law enforcement officers understand that race is and has been a heated issue in our country. Most appreciate the vital need for thoroughness and transparency in pursuit of the greater good in their actions and in their investigations.
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I love singing. I have spent as much of my life trying to improve my singing as I have practising guitar.
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When it came to 'Binge,' it wasn't my intention to get on a little soapbox and have a teaching moment. It was more, 'Here are things that have happened to me; here's what I've learned from it. If you'd like to learn from it too, great; if you just like the entertainment aspect, that's fine too.'
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[John] Calvin is often identified with his account of predestination. Yet that appears in the third book of his Institutes, not the first.
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I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.