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.
Quotes to Explore
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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.
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Timidity does not inspire bold acts.
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There's nothing that will change someone's moral outlook quicker than cash in large sums.
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I know exactly what it is like to fight against the odds and to overcome adversity.
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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.
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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.
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I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.
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When you go from one place to another, you go with experience, you don't go with prescriptions.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I know more than anyone the divergent views about my father. I want to be judged on my own merits.
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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?
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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.
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The worst thing you could ever get is people who think they know everything.
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David - the man after God's own heart - was a man of war and a mighty man of valour. When all Israel were on the run, David faced Goliath - alone... with God - and he but a stripling, and well scolded, too, by his brother for having come to see the battle.
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Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.
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The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.
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If someone says 'grunge' or 'punk,' you know what the sound is, but if you say 'No Wave,' it's kind of mysterious. That was the most interesting part and should have been the most inspirational thing about it... here's this collective sonic insanity, and none of it sounds anything alike.
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The only day I will worry is if I stop getting exciting roles. As an actor, I have so much to give. There's a lot of fire and hunger in me to juice every part that I get.
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Volunteering has been undervalued in Britain for a long time. Often it has been seen as a kind of cut-price, amateur version of work that would be better done by the state. When politicians speak about it, people hear in the background the sound of budgets being cut.
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Sometimes words are not needed, and the simplicity of expressing yourself through an art form is one of the best ways of communication.
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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.
