Mahershala Ali Quotes
I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.
Quotes to Explore
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Any creative process comes with a level of self-analysis and self-criticism. There's a lot of waking up in the middle of the night going, 'Oh, I wish I had done that differently.'
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I had an agent in Salt Lake City, but acting was more like a hobby.
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.
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Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.
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You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking.
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I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'
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Songwriter friends will be like, 'Oh my God, when are you going to put out 'Love Triangle?'' It's just been that song for me that really helped me get a lot of writing sessions and helped jump-start my writing career.
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I always tell young actors to have a back-up. You don't want to find yourself at the age of 30 still struggling to make a living out of acting.
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Hard writing makes easy reading.
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I don't think you have to be in these serious, heavy, independent little movies to be an actor. Some of the most interesting acting I've seen is on cable television.
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I've made a kind of pact with myself where I said, It doesn't matter what it is as long as I'm acting.
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Writing about a person whose struggle you wish you could solve is an act of compassion and also, frankly, opportunism.
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Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
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I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
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Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.
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Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven.
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Acting is equal parts talent and perseverance.
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As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
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R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.
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I want to create a foundation, like a maison, in my home in the Marais. I am going to leave everything there. I am only passing through. I'm not a proprietor of anything, even if I have homes and things.
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The rebels will be thinking about retaliation, what we have to do is stop; stop and transform it into a spiral of forgiveness and reconciliation.
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I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.
