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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Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
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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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It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.
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Tak Fujimoto and I, when we started getting enough of a budget where we could afford the right lenses - 'cause we started out doing low-budget pictures together - we started experimenting with this subjective camera thing. And we kind of fell in love with the idea of using that as our close-up.
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I met one child there eleven years old, speaking three languages [in Guinea]. He could speak English, French and Malinke. Speaking my language actually better than I could. And this hypocrisy - they tell us here in America [ that black people can't be intelligent].
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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.
