Bernard-Henri Levy Quotes
I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, "All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book"? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.
Quotes to Explore
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'Skins' is about a group of teenagers in Bristol, and it's all about what they get up to and all the different things they do. I think it's a good show because it's come from a very real place, and there's a lot of young people involved in the writing.
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Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.
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Writing an essay is like a school assignment: I have my topic, I organize my thoughts, and I write it. I have complete control over what I'm doing. Writing a novel is like setting out on a journey without knowing who or what I'll encounter, how long it's going to take, or where I'm going to end up.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
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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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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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Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.
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A book tour is not a good opportunity to let your mind wander. You have to pay attention, remember salespeople's and interviewers' names, succinctly summarize your book in a 'selling' way, and so on.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.
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Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.
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I read that book, 'Lonesome Dove,' and I told my agent that they were gonna make a miniseries out of it and I wanted to be in it. I didn't care what part.
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I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.
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I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.
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I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time.
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I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence.
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It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
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There's no vacation from being a parent.
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I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.
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I'm not desperate to sign, like, a record deal. I'm very hungry, but I'm just not desperate for it.
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If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned - swim!
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I am obsessed with why people turn out the way they are.
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I don't think anyone can call a movie like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' a horror movie. It's a jolt. It's a series of jolts followed by a quick one-liner that's wallpapered with an MTV rock & roll soundtrack. That's not horror to me.
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I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, "All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book"? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.
