Nancy Willard Quotes
I haven't a clue how my story will end, but that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that's when you discover the stars.
Quotes to Explore
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I regrettably wasted time at university by being overwhelmed and intimidated by the talent of other composers. I felt stuck and didn't know what I was doing there. I enjoyed my experience, but I didn't grab it in the way I would now.
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Once you make it to your point of making it, you'll appreciate the struggle.
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I have a strong upper body; I'm an arms swimmer, and I always have been.
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I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
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I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.
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Another occupation might have been better.
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I smoke, isn't that terrible?
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My first workshop was in Rome, and that was the start of House of Waris. In a little magical atelier, a goldsmith, his apprentice, his stone setter - and that was where it began.
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I can't take the theater side out of myself.
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The formula for achieving middle-class success is simple: Finish high school; don't have a child before the age of 20; and get married before having the child.
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If you're going to sell stock and somebody wants to buy it at a price and that price is not a price you dictate, but demand dictates, sell it to them now.
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I'm not a pin-up, thankfully. I'm not suggesting I feel unconfident. I am beautiful to my husband. I am beautiful to my friends. I feel sexy and all those things with the people I love.
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Whatever its flaws, the United Nations is still the only institution that brings together all the countries of the world. And it is the best forum for the United States to spur countries to act - and to hold them accountable when they don't.
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When I was small, I was the same as everyone else. I used to play in a small council estate nearby. But it's really my family who taught me. I started watching my dad play from the age of two. I wanted to be like him.
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That's actually how my parents met. They were pen pals. My mom was in the Philippines and my father was in the States, and they wrote to each other. He went out to meet her, and they wed not too long after.
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The Soviet Union was a very useful ally in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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That's what you want to do as an older artist - you want to reinvent, but there has to be that vein in there for why people were listening to you before in the first place.
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In a pine tree behind me, an eagle waits out the rain, hunched into himself, brooding. Crows squabble, a murder chasing a raven. Seals cruise the lines of fishing nets bobbing in the water, hoping for an easy meal, the tender bellies of salmon.
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When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
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I resent that there is an image of perfection that is getting thinner and thinner. I've got a lovely husband and children, and I didn't lose weight to find those things.
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I have always despised people who thought they were better than others, and I made a promise to myself that I'd never turn into that kind of person. My family also helps to keep me grounded. Whenever I get a 'diva moment,' as they like to call it, they let me know it and say, 'Stop acting like a diva!' They're pretty good at it, too.
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It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible.
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I haven't a clue how my story will end, but that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that's when you discover the stars.
