Alberto Manguel Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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There is a recurring temptation for any nation, and for any writer who operates within its field of force, to make an ornament of the past: to turn the losses to victories and to restate humiliations as triumphs.
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I was raised Catholic in Rockford, Illinois. But I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Oh God, no.
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Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.
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'Giving 2.0' frames giving as a learning experience and encourages everyone to make giving a part of your year-round life.
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It's quite rare that you find models taken care of backstage.
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For the most part, I don't have a Facebook page; I don't Twitter.
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I am very different to how people think I am. It's the characters I play that they are responding to.
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I have odd thumbs that are extremely flexible. I can bend them quite far down the back side of my hand, basically the opposite side you'd even try to attempt bending your thumb. Because of that, I'm a very good thumb wrestler.
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I feel comfortable whenever I step on the floor.
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In China, we don't know about the swimming pool game, but we know about Marco Polo.
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Someone told me, 'When you go see Pearl Jam, it's going to be a spiritual experience,' and it was. It was my first time seeing them live, and I've been a lifelong fan. Eddie Vedder's voice is a million times better live, and I couldn't believe the passion he put into every single song.
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I love the creativity of New York, but I don't enjoy the city - I don't like living here.
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The hardest thing about being an unpublished writer is that there's always that voice in your head that asks if you're really being a fool. You might just really stink and not know it. You have to have a lot of blind faith in the process. You have to like it so much that you're going to do it anyway.
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When someone was hitting me, or like sexually molesting me, it just seemed normal to continue to do that to myself.
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In many cases your imagination is much more effective than what can be shown. It primes you to know something is about to happen - the anticipation and anxiety is worse than what ends up happening.
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Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don't really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.
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I don't like to Google myself. I try and avoid it whenever I can.
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I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.
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It takes more to make one sage today than it did to make the seven of Greece. And you need more resources to deal with a single person these days than with an entire nation in times past.
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I had an interesting day's reading yesterday, with the sudden sensation of being in close contact with what I was reading. ... But as for reading how curious it is: all these books, their lore of the ages, waiting to be embraced but usually slipping out of one's nerveless hands on to the floor. When one reads properly it is as if a third person is present.
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When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal.
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In the beginning, I want to say something about human greatness. Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.
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One can transform a place by reading in it.
