William Deresiewicz Quotes

But it is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it.

William Deresiewicz

• True
• Jobs
• Being
• Deals

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Think of the difference between a team sport and one that you do by yourself. Like it or not, if you're by yourself, you're going to be faced with a lot more of your own doubts and your own drawbacks and your own whatever.

  

  Campbell Scott
  • Think
  • Team
  • Yourself

• The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.

  

  Barry Eisler
  • Different
  • Trying
  • Book

• Perhaps things are not things but words: metaphors, words for other things.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Words
  • Things
  • Other

• The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.

  

  Ida B. Wells
  • American
  • Spirit
  • Intelligence

• I don't think I can play Mr. Bachchan.

  

  Ram Charan
  • Think
  • Play
  • I Can

• We may define therapy as a search for value.

  

  Abraham Maslow
  • May
  • Value
  • Search

• I adore Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh, but more because they were good actresses. That's what makes me interested in them, that they didn't present themselves as idols; they were just doing their jobs.

  

  Imelda Staunton
  • Good
  • Me
  • Present

• I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • People
  • Conflict
  • Unhappy

• Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Single

• I don't want to go slumming in somebody else's pain just to write a book. I want to go into those darker places to shine a light on that experience and come out with a story that validates the human spirit.

  

  Patricia McCormick
  • Experience
  • Book
  • Light

• Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.

  

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
  • Science
  • Idea
  • Speaking

• Any partying I did, I did at home. I didn't want to be in the spotlight... There's an easy way to get away from the paparazzi; they're not that difficult to hide from and you don't need to go out for coffee every five minutes.

  

  Valerie Bertinelli
  • Home
  • Easy
  • Coffee

• What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of 'CSI' and 'Grey's Anatomy' episodes with pints of ice cream.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Happy
  • Me
  • Mom

• Neural implants could accomplish things no external interface could: Virtual and augmented reality with all five senses; augmentation of human memory, attention, and learning speed; even multi-sense telepathy - sharing what we see, hear, touch, and even perhaps what we think and feel with others.

  

  Ramez Naam
  • Reality
  • Attention
  • Learning

• It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • Learn
  • Story
  • Conservative

• Every generation looks at literature through the lens of their own experience, but with the Bible, everyone gets apprehensive and thinks it'll be too stuffy.

  

  Walter Kirn
  • Experience
  • Literature
  • Bible

• Ah, but it's nice to be in the opposition, nice to be a bone in somebody's throat.

  

  Jack Levine
  • Nice
  • Opposition
  • Bone

• I mean if I'm in the middle of a field with my keyboard and some headphones and I feel inspired to write something, I'll just write something really beautiful and mellow.

  

  Vanessa Brown
  • Beautiful
  • Mean
  • Feel

• Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.

  

  Taylor Hackford
  • Look
  • Devil
  • Performance

• This world is given as a prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come.

  

  Frederick William Robertson
  • World
  • Men
  • True

• Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

  

  E. B. White
  • Time
  • Live
  • Country

• England was the first true colonial power to use its dominion over a large part of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, North America, and many Caribbean islands, in the first half of the 20th century.

  

  Fidel Castro
  • Power
  • America
  • True

• But it is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it.

  

  William Deresiewicz
  • True
  • Jobs
  • Being