Whitney Balliett Quotes
Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.
Quotes to Explore
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I breathe martial arts every day of my life.
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Now, everybody knows my music. So that's really cool. A lot of kids know it. Now, when I go to a sports game, everybody knows my name.
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I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody.
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'Independents' - the industry term for companies that have more capital and know-how than the typical 'wildcatter' - can grow either by exploring and finding reserves or by buying a company that already has them.
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The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
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A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.
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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.
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It's pretty easy to get sucked into a vortex of others and what their thoughts are and letting other people's judgments of you make you actually believe them about yourself. And sometimes you just need people to remind you that none of it means anything.
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Three women in my family, close relatives, have had breast cancer, and two have died from it, and still I never thought it could happen to me. I didn't even regularly check my breasts.
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When I look back, I'm definitely proud of what I did. It kind of allows me to move forward and reset my goals.
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I don't want to discuss my breasts with the whole world!
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It's a perfect wave when small and the most beautiful and scary wave on Earth when it's big, as the swell from deep water hits the shallow reef ledge. A ten-foot high wave and a 30-footer break in the same depth of water.
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Black lives are too easy to take in America because we don't want to question why people are so afraid of black and brown people to begin with. And that's what I want 'Strong Island' to do.
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I think it's really important that we have a level playing field for global trade.
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A guy that I was supposed to face - and I think that he was just plain downright scared to get in the ring with me because he was one of those guys that was on top and saw a huge threat in Brock Lesnar at the time - that's 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin.
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Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.
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I'm convinced that quite a lot of young people, when they get in trouble with the law, it's a cry for help there. Because it's not that they go out to offend. It's that their behaviour is self-parading, it's the big 'I'. And sometimes that means they're really lacking in confidence.
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Just the concept of personal freedom within a democracy, for instance, is a relatively young idea - only about 300 years old in this country.
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I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.
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I don't think that the trickle-down theory of diversity ever really works.
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Intelligent analysis of the composer's intention and strict adherence to it automatically ensures sincerity.
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The corporation is one of the great unheralded human inventions of destruction. It is a way to absolve from any personal liability a bunch of people. They form together in a massive ID and they do whatever they want.
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a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
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Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.
