Charles Baxter (Charles Morley Baxter) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I am a very private person. No one ever knows anything about me as I don't think it is necessary. I tell people as much as I want them to know about me.
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Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.
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For the first time in six or seven thousand years, many people of goodwill find themselves confused about art. They want to enjoy it because enjoying art is something they expect of themselves as civilized persons, but they're unsure how to do so. They aren't even sure which of the visible objects are art and which are furniture, clothes, hors d'oeuvres, or construction rubble, and whether a pile of dead and decomposing rats is deliberate art or just another pile of decomposing rats.
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In the Deep South, the unequal distribution of school funds based on Negroes’ “mental inferiority” was one way the caste system maintained itself through the generations. “Inferior” students got inferior schools, but truly, it was the inferior schools that created the inferior students. The two years of study resulted in the book Deep South, a seminal book in modern anthropology.
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There is a solidarity that black people can find in celebrating the athletic success of our own, especially in sports where our existence is sparse.
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There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
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No one's dream job involves a kiosk.
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We translate into reality thoughts of poverty just as quickly as we do thoughts of riches. But when our attitude toward ourselves is big, and our attitude toward others is generous and merciful, we attract big and generous portions of success.
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Besides my fast and slooow songs, I further divide my work into three main song types: the ballad or story song, the variation on a theme (saying the same thing over and over and over again) song, and the weird song. It's important to have weird songs, but I find that a little weirdness goes a long way.
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The principle is that every member needs to represent their district.
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Cloning interferon was not something I wanted to get into.
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Ethan: I love you, I whispered in her ear. She held my face in her hands and leaned back so she could look at me. Lena: I don't think I could ever love anything the way I love you.
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There is not wrong, there is no right, and I will sleep very well tonight.
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In high school, I used to draw on my arms with a Sharpie. I knew I was gonna have a lot of tattoos. I'm not exactly classified as an artist, so my drawings could only go so far as I could take 'em. Now my tats are all a story: There's not one I can remember where I got a tat just to get a tat. It's all a part of me. I don't think I'm finished yet.
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The way something is presented will define the way you react to it.
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It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don't feel like an oligarch.
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If you want to appoint someone to help stop the spread of a lethal contagion, you would never think of Klain. But if you want to contain the Ebola episode so it stays as quiet as possible until after the election, he is the right guy for the job. Good luck to us all.
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The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.