Alice McDermott Quotes
What interests me is whatever it is that allows the heart to continue to yearn for something the intelligence knows is impossible to have: a lost love, a shelter from life's blows, the return of a time past, even a connection to the dead.

Quotes to Explore
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As for advice for aspiring authors, the best I can give is to be brave. It sounds like a simple enough thing, but it's not. Rejection is such an integral part of this journey, and it never goes away.
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The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.
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Always remember that better days are ahead - if not in this life, in the next.
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The artistic part of us all - I think that the easiest way to appreciate this - is through architecture. Architecture is very impressive; the beauty of buildings, temples.
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Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
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God manifests himself in each historical period according to the understanding of the people of the era.
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In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the U.S. military's might, three printing firms, and hundreds of trucks.
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You have to be willing to ask questions that almost no one else would ask.
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I like not to feel that all my eggs are in one basket, or I get nervous.
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What we want to do is put a price on greenhouse gases. Because if they're more expensive, businesses will find a way to be more efficient or switch to solar or hydro or wind power. So that will reduce emissions.
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I don't get this whole super-skinny obsession. I really think women look more beautiful when they let their curves show.
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I get mad quick and and go off at the handle quick.
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I still have the dress I wore on the first date with my husband, which was more than 66 years ago. I still have it, and it still fits.
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The biggest part of Loopt is about discovering the world around you, never replacing a social experience - only adding to it.
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Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.
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Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.
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People did not even then like to eat dirt, if they could see it.
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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
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I love my work, but I don't like being in the spotlight. I was never going to be an actor, that's for sure.
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Women should be freer to say, 'I have a friend with the most amazing life, so interesting, and she says in a sad, little voice, 'Everyone's getting married.''
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Politics is a bit of a misnomer really. Politics as we know it in everyday life has a lot of tokenism and hot air involved. If the object of the exercise is to make life better for those from the bottom upwards, which would be my thing, then there’s not a lot of it about. In one sense I’m on two stalls. If you ask me on somedays I’ll tell you I hate politics and it’s better if we break it all down, but I do come from the left, that’s where I come from as a person. My dad was a trade unionist, I’ve been a trade unionist, my brother is a trade unionist… and I’ve always considered myself to be a humanitarian. Not in the commonly perceived sense of the word, but the actual root and base of what it means to be a human being, that’s always been my start and end point. It’s a mixed thing but if you were to pin any kind of colours to me, it would be left – very left.
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Active-shooter scenarios have become part of the education lexicon. I had fire drills. My parents had duck and cover - nuclear and atomic bomb drills. Kids today grow up with this idea that this could happen at any point in time.
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I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.
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What interests me is whatever it is that allows the heart to continue to yearn for something the intelligence knows is impossible to have: a lost love, a shelter from life's blows, the return of a time past, even a connection to the dead.