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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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.
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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 feel like, when I'm 100% healthy, I can do anything.
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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 grew up eating Cuban food all the time.
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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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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.
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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 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.
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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'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?
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I've always enjoyed painting, but I went to teach in schools in Zimbabwe instead.
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Country taught me how to sing, it put me on a path. But I was never going to be locked into a formula. I don't want to be considered a current country artist.
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There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.
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Marriage takes work - it doesn't just happen.
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At first, I took theater courses on the side. Then, theater became my minor; then it was my major.
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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.
