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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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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To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
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Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.
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I don't mind talking about acting. I don't have anything interesting to say about it, but it's interesting talking about it.
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I think 'No' is a very powerful word in our business that is very hard to use early on in your career. But I also think I was pretty arrogant when I was younger... I used that word maybe too much, but it did help me with finding roles that I did like.
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People like to let loose at rock concerts and it gives them an excuse to do it in a way that is not destructive to others and not really destructive to the band.
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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.
