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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There's a great freedom in writing by yourself. You can write anything you want.
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Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.
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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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Frankly, alcohol leads to a lot of other things when you start drinking at 12-years old. It is a big problem that needs to be addressed. Frankly, the industry has pushed us back and pushed us back.
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I try to do things I love or care about for some reason.
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The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
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We only work four days a week, we only work three weeks out of the month, and we get four months off for the summer. So there's plenty of time for me to spend with the kids.
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I really enjoy watching TV; it offers an amazing window, and its an incredible way of presenting history to young people in particular.
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I like pastels and lighter shades on darker skins. I feel like it lifts everything and accentuates being chocolate.
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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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Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.
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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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It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my early teens when 'The Magic Barrel' was published and I first read it.
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For centuries, America has led the world on a long march toward freedom and democracy. Let's reclaim our clean energy leadership and lead the world toward clean energy independence.
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On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.
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Discussion, therefore, is one of the motive powers of life, and, as such, is not to be deprecated.
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An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.
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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.
