Amiri Baraka Quotes
The black artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.
Quotes to Explore
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The first job I ever had was at a pool-liner-manufacturing plant. Minimum wage was $4.25, and that's what I was making. It was this huge, hot, un-air-conditioned factory staffed with all women and me. This is in Georgia, during the summertime, so it was pretty ridiculous.
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I have always been a generous and enthusiastic reader.
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In Bollywood, if you work with a superstar, even if you are a newcomer, you become a superstar. That didn't happen with me.
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Science without respect for human life is degrading to us all and reflects a hollow and deceptive philosophy, a philosophy that we as a people should never condone.
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Life is not always easy to live, but the opportunity to do so is a blessing beyond comprehension. In the process of living, we will face struggles, many of which will cause us to suffer and to experience pain.
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I am insecure. If you ask me, everybody is.
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I haven't done as many films as I would have liked.
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All people, regardless of whether they're athletes or not, should treat people the way they want to be treated.
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I've done all the table reads for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow for all the pirate movies, because he's just been doing other stuff, and I just love the whole Jack Sparrow thing he's got going on; it is just genius, and I just think he has so much fun with it.
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I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work.
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No one person is an island.
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I'm very fortunate to have gotten past the cancer problem.
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I will negotiate with my worst enemy.
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I see a lot of comments on Twitter and stuff about how ugly I am, how bad I am at the drums, how awkward I look, and I'm like, yeah, I agree with most of those things.
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Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
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I consider myself a progressive. I have a passion for people who work. To me, this is about forward looking versus backward looking. Ideological gradations are the wrong way to look at it.
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All the Junos, the Grammy nominations, the gold and platinum records, did nothing to assuage my conviction that I was an out-and-out loser.
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A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.
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There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts.
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I need to take a break from this life as a human for 45 minutes and go experience a little bit of immortality.
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And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too.
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I'm a lunatic.
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Birthday parties make me nervous as hell. They're one of those things where you're forced to be happy. And even if you're totally depressed, you're got to pretend you're glad you were born, regardless of the fact that getting older means you're closer to dying.
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The black artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.
