Alice McDermott Quotes
I'm interested in characters who should know better, who know they should give up, move on, accept life as it is, with all its constraints - life, death, time - but don't.
Quotes to Explore
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I wish the world could better know this country for what it really is. Not just a greedy economic giant crouching fearfully behind its walls, not just a panoplied warrior nervously fingering his weapons. What is this, is a people who gather together in thousands to give a people's government its essential vitality.
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Like in every peace process, and especially in Colombia, there all kinds of problems that will come through. Not only is the process by itself very complicated but it has lots of underground complications.
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Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.
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I watch a lot of television. I always have.
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Now, everybody knows my music. So that's really cool. A lot of kids know it. Now, when I go to a sports game, everybody knows my name.
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The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
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Sick children, if not too shy to speak, will always express this wish. They invariably prefer a story to be told to them, rather than read to them.
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I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.
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That's one of the things I miss most about Australia - the countryside.
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D.C. is where I started. That's home for me. I always love coming back to the area. They treat me so well, and people show up. They're excited and claim me as their own. I love it.
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If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.
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Whenever I received too much praise, it just didn't feel right to me – ever.
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I did a B.A. with a major in fine arts and a minor in psychology. I wanted to become a teacher or do art therapy for the elderly. But then I realised I wanted to travel instead.
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There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.
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There was never any question that I would go to college, that I would travel, that I would go to the theater early and often.
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I love New York. Love it.
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Before 9/11, I was playing a wide range of characters. I would play a lover, a cop, a father. As long as I could create the illusion of the character, the part was given to me. But after 9/11, something changed. We became the villains, the bad guys. I don't mind to play the bad guy as long as the bad guy has a base.
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I think sometimes when I go to make a move on something, people try to disqualify any talent that I have or any hard work that I've done.
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Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.
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I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.
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Gollum is entirely based on the notion of addiction. The way that the ring pervades him, makes him craving, lustful, depletes him physically, psychologically and mentally.
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Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves; to break our own records; to outstrip our yesterdays by our todays; to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could; to give as we never have given; to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever. This is the true idea: to get ahead of ourselves.
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It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now?
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I'm interested in characters who should know better, who know they should give up, move on, accept life as it is, with all its constraints - life, death, time - but don't.
