Tea Obreht Quotes
A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.
Quotes to Explore
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With film, I have to be a team player; it's a whole different thing. I can't just be a one-man show. I have to learn how to use people to the best of their ability and motivate them to be as passionate about the project as I am.
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I grew up in a house full of books, and we belonged to the Country Lending Service - each month the State Library would send us a parcel of books by train.
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The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.
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No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks.
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Once you are a model, you do have to fly a million red-eye flights, and you do have to entertain a different client every single day.
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The American people need to tell their member of Congress that we need a strong defense to protect us and to prevent wars. We can't get away with simply leading from behind and gutting our defenses.
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I was quite keen on silviculture, the growing of trees, and that was something I gave a lot of thought to. Maybe I could've gone in that direction. But it just so happened that while I was trying to make up my mind, I enrolled in art school, and there I began to develop my interest in music, parallel with my interest in the visual arts.
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Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.
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If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.
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I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor.
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You can imagine me as a kid growing up in redneck Texas with ballet shoes, tucking the violin under my arm. I had to fight my way up.
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In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
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I did not have a van, or wear Birkenstocks and tie-dyes.
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I try to write about a woman finding her self-respect, valuing herself, and liking herself again. But what one desperately wants now is to write a proper novel.
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Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It's gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it's natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it's how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period.
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I like writing idealistically, romantically and swashbucklingly.
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I hang out all the time with kids and young scouts and I never meet kids who don't want adventure.
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Throughout the day, I frequently use my iPhone to check 'Deadline Hollywood' and my Twitter feed, as well as the 'Daily Beast,' the 'New York Times,' 'Metsblog,' and 'Thejetsblog.'
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People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?
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Book Everything is Flammable is an odd format though, not quite a diary and not quite a memoir. I was working on it as it was happening. This was gratifying to me.
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When I feel that I'm going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.
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Why would you want to be be counseled in your grief? It's too private.
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Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.
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A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.
