Walter Kirn Quotes
A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of.
Quotes to Explore
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Twenty years ago my parents wouldn't know who the X-Men were, and now everybody knows that stuff. It means that deconstruction of the superhero is something you can do. All those movies have led to a point where we can finally have 'Watchmen' with a Superman character who doesn't want to save the world and a Batman who has trouble in bed.
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We need to have Turkey respect democracy, human rights, and fundamental freedoms.
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People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.
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I thought if I put my book up on the Internet as a file that you could download, and I told people about it, maybe some people would download it and read it, and maybe I could get some response.
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Being a 911 operator means balancing seemingly contradictory skills. On one hand, operators have to be fanatically precise and well-organized. On the other, they must be able to establish rapport with panicky callers.
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I do not deal with threats and ultimatums.
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I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
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It didn't scare me to be vulnerable because I think that's when you get something great.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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Governments and nations should sit together and resolve issues. Reforms must be reached through understanding. But others should not interfere.
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It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.
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It was very hard for me to practice and enjoy my tennis, and I didn't know the why, so I worked with psychologists to try and see what was happening. They pushed me really hard.
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Scientists at MIT and engineering schools all across America say that they could improve the fuel economy standards for the existing set of vehicles by 10 miles per gallon using existing technology, without compromising safety or comfort at all.
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What you look like, whether you're Brad Pitt or Charles Laughton, is significant for actors.
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I agree with cosmetic surgery for medical reasons - my mother had breast cancer and I think it's very sad when somebody has no choice in what happens to their body.
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To have success in your professional life is not so hard. To succeed as a man is more difficult.
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I try to support stories that enable us to see the difficulties in our society and the challenges we face, which is why I've also produced documentaries like 'Brick City' and 'Serving Life.'
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Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.
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That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
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The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.
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If you want to do something, what does it matter where you are ranked?
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I'm happy. I learned. I learned from my mistakes. But when you learn, you see all the results; you look more mature, and you put all the pieces together.
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I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.
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A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of.
