Boots Riley (Raymond Lawrence Riley) Quotes
I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn't want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, "Don't be sexist!" because that's not how I talk in regular life.
Quotes to Explore
-
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
-
I wanted to make Canadian films, and I ended up making American films.
-
When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.
-
When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It's them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.
-
On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.
-
The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.
-
I became what I wanted to be.
-
Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.
-
I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.
-
Music can be such a vulnerable thing, so when you're delivering a vocal or writing a piece of music, it's easy to get sideways.
-
If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.
-
People shout out for songs and I don't even remember writing them.
-
And I love writing. I've always loved writing.
-
I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.
-
I have been taking voice and singing lessons since age 10 and originally got into it because I was really interested in musical theater. After writing my first couple of songs and performing at age 14, I knew that I really wanted to be a singer.
-
I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
-
I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.
-
I love television, and my love for it has made me curious about writing it. It feels like television's moving toward something more novelistic, and that's what I started wanting to do. But I can't say that I'm dying to get notes from a studio. The artistic control that you get as a playwright is worth its weight in gold.
-
I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.
-
Like everyone else in this world, I have had struggles. There's disappointment and obstacles in everybody's life. I feel like I was writing 'Second Chance' not just for myself, but also for the people who have struggled.
-
Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?' Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?' Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.
-
I am a conservative Republican, a firm believer in free market capitalism. A free market system allows all parties to compete, which ensures the best and most competitive project emerges, and ensures a fair, democratic process.
-
Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation... If one is to record one's life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of the disorderly discontinuity which makes it so absurd, unpredictable, bearable.
-
I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn't want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, "Don't be sexist!" because that's not how I talk in regular life.
