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 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

• My father is my idol, and I have grown up watching his films. He is my biggest influence and inspiration. I have learnt a lot from him, and I am who I am because of him. I'm extremely grateful to him for that.

  

  Mahesh Babu
  • Father
  • Inspiration
  • Influence

• More than the Grave is closed to me -The Grave and that EternityTo which the Grave adheres -I cling to nowhere till I fall -The Crash of nothing, yet of all -How similar appears -

  

  Emily Dickinson
  • Fall

• I had had some months of depression. Not serious enough to keep me from work. So, I guess you'd call that a mild depression. It was becoming worse. And I was being treated for it with anti-depressants.

  

  Jane Pauley
  • Work
  • Serious
  • Depression

• I always thought I'd eventually learn how to draw really well, and despite constant evidence to the contrary, I just kept on trying. If you're too good at anything, you don't have to think about the process, whereas I feel like I spend my life with my head under the bonnet, trying to understand how everything works.

  

  Mark Haddon
  • Life
  • Good
  • Trying

• I was in fashion school, my brother has a law background, and my sister-in-law had worked in production, but none of us had a proper fashion business education.

  

  Alexander Wang
  • School
  • Business
  • Education

• 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