Elia Suleiman Quotes
People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They prefer coherence, what's blunt and has clarity.
Quotes to Explore
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As far as control and stuff is concerned, I never had any more in my life than for that All-Star game in 1934.
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International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.
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I have three Defensive Players of the Year. Only one other player has done that. But being a defensive lineman, it's hard to control the game.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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I think the biggest thing is voice. Whose voice is it? Who gets to control the narrative?
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If I were to say at any point that I feel really confident or really in control, that would be a mistake. Because I don't. I always see where I didn't do things the right way.
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I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all.
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What we know is that the environmental movement had a series of dazzling victories in the late '60s and in the '70s where the whole legal framework for responding to pollution and to protecting wildlife came into law. It was just victory after victory after victory. And these were what came to be called 'command-and-control' pieces of legislation.
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The good thing about execution issues are that they are within our control.
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Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.
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Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
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I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
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What we can control is our readiness.
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When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. The bourgeois novel flinches from such notions.
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I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.
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A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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I have heard that man can acquire superhuman powers through it and perform miracles. I saw a man who had brought a ghost under control. The ghost used to procure various things for his master. What shall I do with superhuman powers? Can one realize God through them? If God is not realized then everything becomes false.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.
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On the dance floor, as much as you say, 'Ladies, you are the car. He is the driver. You can only go where he takes you,' they still try to be in control.
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Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
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There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.
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People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They prefer coherence, what's blunt and has clarity.
