John Oates Quotes
If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that's the real joy.
Quotes to Explore
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I wasn't real quick, and I wasn't real strong. Some guys will just take off and it's like, whoa. So I beat them with my mind and my fundamentals.
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Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen compassionately or nonjudgmentally to another person - not to get too heavy about it - but I once heard somebody say that was a form of real prayer.
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You have another little drink, and I'll have another little drink, and maybe we can work up some real family feeling here.
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That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.
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We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?
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My friends and I were wild and we liked to joy-ride.
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It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
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I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.
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There's some real dark days where you just feel like the story is falling apart in every one. Just keep moving forward, even when you are bluffing, even when you don't quite know what is going to happen next.
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I am not into publicity. I'm not good at it. I get anxiety about it.
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I dance. A lot. I work grief and sadness out of my body when I dance, and I bring in joy and rhythm.
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'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.
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A woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserves to experience unplanned joy.
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Practicing is not normally fun. Sometimes people say they're practicing, but they're really just enjoying themselves and the instrument. That's not real practice.
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When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
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When you play a character, you get to see the world through their eyes. Whether it's a fictional world or a real world, you do get to see somebody else's point of view, whether he's a good guy or a bad guy.
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One woman came up to me at a lecture and observed that I was much fatter than on television; I think I look better onscreen than in real life. It's the lights.
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Getting to share the stories in my head with other people and have them enjoy those stories, and having them come to see my characters as real. That's so cool.
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I guess a lot of comic-book adaptations strive for realism. Christopher Nolan is making Batman seem very real and very serious.
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Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought.
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I would love to keep directing commercials. I love it so much. I love working with brands and ad agencies and old white men who have been doing this for 60 years.
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The Hippocratic Oath says do no harm. It's the Hypocritical Oath that says do no harm to one's political future.
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The most profound reason... why the metropolis conduces to the urge for the most individual personal existence... appears to me to be the following: the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the 'objective spirit' over the 'subjective spirit.'
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If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that's the real joy.
