A. J. Jacobs Quotes
I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.
Quotes to Explore
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North Korea, under its thirtysomething Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is no country for old men. The latest casualty in Kim's ongoing purge of the senior military command was the defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, who reportedly committed the classic old man's offense of falling asleep in a meeting.
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After leaving school, I travelled around Europe for about six months. In Denmark, I thought that was my chance to get an amazing haircut, so I went to what I thought was a great hairdresser. It turned out to be the car wash of hairdressers, and I walked out sporting yet another pudding bowl, but this time with a stripe bleached down the centre.
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
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I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.
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All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
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Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
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Millions of people are married. I've never picked up a paper and seen a headline that says, Man Gets Married!
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I've been watching 'The Cosby Show' and 'Roseanne' a lot right now, and those work so well because they're not, like, jokey comedies; they are coming from real characters. We want our show to be like that. A family show.
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I can find God in nature, in animals, in birds and the environment.
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I grew up in uptown Jamaica; I went to a rich school. I was raised by my mother and my stepfather; they made sure education came before anything. I had a good childhood, grew up spending time with my bigger brothers and sisters. My people are good people. I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of people and culture.
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Hot girls have so many options. Sitting at home alone any night of the week and searching the Internet for a dude is on zero hot girls' agendas. So they're definitely not coming after you.
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I wonder now how tough you have to be to get big things done.
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People still kill in the name of religion. We haven't evolved to the point where we're one tribe called humans.
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Coming up with ideas isn't hard. The real challenge is finding the time to actually build something and then finding a home for it.
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It's rumored that doing well in real estate is to be able to close a deal. I did not find that to be the case for myself, I was probably the worst closer out there and I didn't find that was true of my top super stars either.
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To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
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My schedule is so crazy.
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In general, the auditions I go up for are very sparse, I guess because of my ethnicity. And the characters are very similar: shy, innocent and naive; the connotations that come from the way that I look.
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My parents were both entrepreneurs.
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I grew up in New York, and I've always been surrounded by fashion. My grandmother used to write for 'Vogue' in the '50s, and my mother was a dancer and a model.
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I haven't been in a store to buy anything for five years.
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I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.
