Elliott Colla Quotes

I wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. That's how I've figured it out.

Elliott Colla

• Work
• English
• Fiction
• Program
• Master
• Translating
• I Wrote

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Quotes to Explore

• I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • Great
  • Men
  • Man

• I quite like the drama of an encore. I think an encore is for those artists who are inclined to do dramatic gestures, and I certainly would say I am inclined towards them.

  

  Florence Welch Florence and the Machine
  • Drama
  • Artists
  • Dramatic

• Timidity does not inspire bold acts.

  

  Mae Jemison
  • Inspire
  • Bold
  • Timidity

• There's nothing that will change someone's moral outlook quicker than cash in large sums.

  

  Larry Flynt
  • Change
  • Moral
  • Nothing

• I know exactly what it is like to fight against the odds and to overcome adversity.

  

  Karen Handel
  • Know
  • Fight
  • Adversity

• Sometimes it's more difficult to achieve a 10% cost reduction than it is to tell people they have to achieve 50%. Small incremental steps block your view of doing something fundamentally different.

  

  Eckhard Pfeiffer
  • People
  • Different
  • Small

• I feel like, when I'm 100% healthy, I can do anything.

  

  Katarina Johnson-Thompson
  • Like
  • Feel
  • Healthy

• I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.

  

  Larry Wall
  • Hope
  • Think
  • Philosophy

• I grew up eating Cuban food all the time.

  

  Ted Cruz
  • Up
  • Time
  • Food

• I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.

  

  Maeve Binchy
  • Happy
  • Career
  • Marriage

• When you go from one place to another, you go with experience, you don't go with prescriptions.

  

  Lakhdar Brahimi
  • Experience
  • You
  • Place

• So, for me the town hall meetings are really an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue with people, and they've been very helpful.

  

  Jack Markell
  • People
  • Opportunity
  • Me

• I suppose being quite young and being thrust quite dramatically into a large public arena skewered my vision of what it means to live and be a part of something.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Live
  • Vision
  • Young

• High-stakes lying is out of control. And it's costing us big bucks in one way or another. It's not simply a matter of quantifying losses in dollars. It's costing us emotionally and psychologically as well.

  

  Pamela Meyer
  • High
  • Control
  • Matter

• I'm a big foodie. Hyderabadi cuisine is amazing, and the kind of mutton dishes available at some restaurants in the Old City is incredible.

  

  Imtiaz Ali
  • City
  • Kind
  • Amazing

• I hate feeling like a prisoner. I show up somewhere, and I can't explore the city because there's, like, 6,000 to 10,000 people on the lookout for me.

  

  Halsey
  • People
  • Up
  • Feeling

• I know more than anyone the divergent views about my father. I want to be judged on my own merits.

  

  Park Geun-hye
  • Father
  • Want
  • Know

• I'm addicted to avocados, and I'll put them with anything, particularly chillies. Can you imagine if they became extinct? That would be like the apocalypse, no?

  

  Gael Garcia Bernal
  • You
  • Like
  • Imagine

• I finally, you know, moved to Mexico City, where the film industry is. I started working there as a producer, which is a very, very valid thing for women to do, because we always produce for men, right?

  

  Patricia Riggen
  • Men
  • Women
  • City

• Put good energy out. Get good energy back.

  

  Lawrence Tierney
  • Good
  • Energy

• What you're looking at there is my arm, going into the rock... and there it is - stuck. It's been without circulation for 24 hours. It's pretty well gone.

  

  Aron Ralston
  • Pretty
  • Rock

• I hope that a lot of my mother's talents are shown in a lot of the work that I do.

  

  Prince Harry
  • Work
  • Mother
  • Hope

• Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all.

  

  Marge Piercy
  • Work
  • She
  • Attention

• I wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. That's how I've figured it out.

  

  Elliott Colla
  • Work
  • English
  • Fiction