Charles Baxter (Charles Morley Baxter) Quotes
The truth is that I'm never sure how any of my books will be received, and because I can be thin-skinned, I try not to read too many reviews when a book first comes out.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
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Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.
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Reparations, I believe, are talked about for political reasons, trying to cater for the purpose of getting votes. If Congress was serious about reparations - in '93 and '94 the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, and not one single Republican vote was needed for reparations.
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We're not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.
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Every day, you get up, and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.
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I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.
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In boxing, there are no bad guys or good guys. Just people trying to make a living and trying to live up to their pride and to try to become someone.
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I don't burn any calories trying to be masculine; I just happen to be from that world.
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No matter how senior you get in an organization, no matter how well you're perceived to be doing, your job is never done. Every day, you get up and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.
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Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.
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A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
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Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
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We have got into Indian railways and are trying to get into the railway locomotive business in Europe and the United States.
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The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.
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What I'm trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock.
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That's a part that's always a challenge for athletes: trying to keep the passion alive while knowing it's still your job. There's no question that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, I'll be pretty burned out. And when that time comes, then I'll take a step back and take a look at it and see if I want to keep going.
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People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.
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In your career you have a lot of good moments and bad ones. The important thing is to have enough motivation to keep working all the days with humility and trying to be a better player than before. I am going to try to continue doing this.' 5
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'Troublemaker' is not an adaptation of 'Metro Girl' or 'Motor Mouth.' It is an original story. The hardest part was probably trying to keep the sound true to the novels. I always write in first person, and it was important to us that the readers of 'Metro' and 'Motor' be comfortable with the change over to a graphic novel.
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'Marvin Gaye' came about my first day in L.A. It was kind of crazy that that's my first song that I wrote and it blew up that much. What's crazy is the next day I wrote 'See You Again,' so that's pretty interesting. I was trying to prove myself as a songwriter.
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I'd spend every summer in Longview on my grandfather's farm. It was a tiny little town divided by a river, which was the segregation line: that side white, this side black. And meanwhile, I lived in Compton - basically, another whole world sealed into 10 square blocks. It's interesting how insular an environment can be.
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I'm the rogue Canadian in my family – I just happened to be born here while my parents were studying here.
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Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or 'disappearance' to be carried out by their officials with impunity.
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The truth is that I'm never sure how any of my books will be received, and because I can be thin-skinned, I try not to read too many reviews when a book first comes out.
