Wallace Stegner Quotes
... I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?
Quotes to Explore
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Perhaps I'm particularly serious, because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I'm doing.
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Whatever I know how to do, I've already done. Therefore I must always do what I do not know how to do.
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I understand that a lot of girls feel encouraged by what I have been able to do, but I've never felt like I'm a role model. I'm not concerned with building a great legacy or anything because I'll be dead so it won't matter.
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For me, 30 days, it's already pretty good for ribeye or sirloin on the bone. I like my meat grass-fed and juicy. The French never age their meat more than two or three weeks.
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It's not good for comedy to be like, 'Thanks for liking me.' Being popular is poison.
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My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
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I went to these mixers, you know, where you're supposed to meet people. And sure enough, some guy asked me for my phone number. but at the end of the evening he gave it back.
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When you get out of Washington, you realize how much of a Beltway bubble exists.
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I really like crop tops. I like how you can dress them up or down, with jeans or a skirt and heels. I like to be showy and cute. I don't want to be in just a jacket and pants and boots.
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To go straight to 'Scandal' and get to play the larger-than-life guy who has the page-long rants and gets drilled in the leg with blood flying everywhere, it was a blast. It's really been a nice counterpoint after the first season of 'The Carrie Diaries.'
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I'm obsessed with historical English royalty.
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I want police to be protected.
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Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
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Spiraling demand for resources of which our world contains a finite supply is the great long-term threat posed by globalisation. That is why we need new technology to relieve it.
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My dad, as a guy, had to quit school in the ninth grade, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And spent his life pushing wheel barrels of heavy wet cement. So we've gone from pushing cement to now in one generation pushing legislation. But we always want any president to succeed, to do well; that means America does well and Americans do well.
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Religion, richest favor of the skies.
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The best time to do something is when it can be done.
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I saw my dad work hard and then would see and know his interest and intentions, and that wasn't necessarily the narrative you would see in the press.
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It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.
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All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.
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The use of violence in our struggle would be both impractical and immoral. To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.
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... I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?
