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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As CEO of a big company, I have to be a kind of a champion of the interests of our people as insofar as their ability to do their job, to feel comfortable in their work environment, and to be able to fulfill their ambitions.
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If I was a political mercenary, I would be using my talents in another line of work.
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I don't work with people who ask me questions.
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You're in the public eye and you just hope that people don't come up and interrupt you while your in the middle of a meal or a conversation or something like that.
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We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.
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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.
