Alice McDermott Quotes

I don't want to write about violence, and I don't want to hang a plot on a murder. I think it's cheap.

Alice McDermott

• Violence

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I'm not trying to do anything too tricky.

  

  Nate Silver
  • Trying
  • Anything
  • Tricky

• I don't try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

  

  B. B. King
  • Singer
  • Blues
  • Entertainer

• I'd been going to the Louvre since 1951. I thought I knew Paris and the French, but I didn't really. You know how easy it is to make friends when you are traveling. People are curious about you, you are curious about them. But you never really make friends that way. After the Louvre, I discovered that I have friends now because I have enemies.

  

  I. M. Pei
  • People
  • Friends
  • Thought

• Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • History
  • Age
  • Lie

• It's very important to me to love what I do. It was important to me to find a career that I truly enjoy. You can find something that sort of excites you, that's half the battle of life.

  

  Adam Brody
  • Life
  • Important
  • Career

• I had a rat-tail when I was younger. I had this nice Bobby Brown fade, with a rat-tail that was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it.

  

  J. Cole
  • Long
  • Nice
  • End

• The only people playing the roles of classic rock stars are hip-hop artists, now. Kanye's stage persona, and the way he approaches making albums, and the way he wants to be better than everyone else? That's reminiscent of Freddie Mercury. That's reminiscent of the Beatles.

  

  Jack Antonoff Fun.
  • People
  • Rock
  • Better

• People in the film industry always want to save for a rainy day. Many early actors died in small houses with no money, and so they are insecure. My advantage is I don't value money that much. It's an easy thing for me to let go.

  

  Salman Khan
  • People
  • Money
  • Small

• I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.

  

  Yael Naim
  • Think
  • Famous
  • Paris

• One of the ugly secrets of the renewable-energy industry is that its products make no economic sense unless they are highly subsidized.

  

  Nathan Myhrvold
  • Energy
  • Ugly
  • Economic

• Everybody has done something about Marco Polo. It's the tiredest, most trite and worked-over subject in the world, and that was why it appealed to me, because I wanted to do something really new and different about something that had been worked over all these centuries, and I think I did.

  

  Gary Jennings
  • World
  • Different
  • Done

• If you do an autopsy on an 85-year-old who died of a stroke, you will find five other things that person was about to die from.

  

  S. Jay Olshansky
  • You
  • Die
  • Find

• There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don't allow yourself to become one of them.

  

  Ralph Marston
  • Path
  • Yourself
  • Obstacles

• I was born free.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Free
  • Born
  • I Was Born

• I know what my job is: I write the songs, I sing them, I play them on the piano.

  

  Fiona Apple
  • Job
  • Know
  • Piano

• 'Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor.

  

  Adam Driver
  • You
  • Actor
  • Conversation

• The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture.

  

  Ian Hamilton Finlay
  • Book
  • Trust
  • Mad

• Yes, exercise is the catalyst. That's what makes everything happen: your digestion, your elimination, your sex life, your skin, hair, everything about you depends on circulation. And how do you increase circulation?

  

  Jack LaLanne
  • Life
  • Hair
  • Sex

• To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Book
  • Mother
  • Wind

• I have a little dictaphone and if a sound takes my fancy or if a lyric comes to me in the middle of the night I'll just record it there and then.

  

  Barry Gibb Bee Gees
  • Night
  • Sound
  • Record

• I went to Bruges for a weekend away from London. I was supposed to be meeting a girl there the next day. It was a tentative arrangement. From the moment I saw the town, I thought, 'This place is just so cinematic, so gorgeous.' Every corner seemed to offer a new image.

  

  Martin McDonagh
  • Girl
  • Weekend

• You can be a rapper born and raised in go-go music, violence, drugs, crack, Reagonomics, and still, if you hear 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' you're going to find a way to hum along. Guilty pleasures? It don't matter. Sue me - I like the song. To dance to it is another matter.

  

  Wale
  • Up
  • Music
  • Song

• I think America is going to have to think through whether it wants to uplift the political dialogue or advance an approach that divides and, frankly, can lead to violence.

  

  James A. Leach
  • America
  • Political
  • Violence

• I don't want to write about violence, and I don't want to hang a plot on a murder. I think it's cheap.

  

  Alice McDermott
  • Violence