Colson Whitehead Quotes

Quotes to Explore

• It's great when a director like Cameron Crowe can take what you do and fit it into what he's doing. If someone's a fan of you already, they can take what you do and make it work for what they're doing. You don't know their vision, and you're thinking, 'How is this guy going to take what I do and make it work in this movie?'

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Work
  • Great
  • Thinking

• I try to live my life in a holistic way, show that all of it intersects because I'm coming from the same place. Now, at the core of it, I'm just trying to connect and be there, so I'm trying to be there for my family, my wife, my kids, my friends.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Life
  • Live
  • Trying

• I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.

  

  Walter Huston
  • Simple
  • Better
  • Voice

• I think coming to work and being absurd and neurotic and thoughtful at the same time is far more interesting.

  

  Lake Bell
  • Time
  • Work
  • Interesting

• The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think.

  

  Vanessa Redgrave
  • Think
  • Society
  • Change

• I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.

  

  Calvin Trillin
  • School
  • Remember
  • High

• Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.

  

  Karl Liebknecht
  • Party
  • Democracy
  • Social

• I feel that the world is increasingly about the bottom line, and not so much about human respect or human dignity. In that regard, people who care about other people will not be in a position to make choices and do things that other people who they're competing against will get to do.

  

  Dan Gilroy Breakfast Club
  • People
  • World
  • Respect

• All I ever wanted to do is make music.

  

  Caleb Johnson
  • Music
  • Wanted
  • Ever

• Grass-roots work is not flashy, and rarely celebrated on the national media level, but that is where change begins.

  

  Ilyasah Shabazz
  • Work
  • Change
  • Media

• Democracy presumes that we're all created equal; competition proves we are not, or else every race would end in a tie.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Democracy
  • End
  • Competition

• The surface is all you get of me.

  

  Gary Hume
  • You
  • Me
  • Get

• Susan, an only child who never had any roots, and I, a lone wolf who got married 20 years to late, were adopted by the kids as much as they were by us.

  

  Harpo Marx
  • Kids
  • Child
  • Roots

• Music is the social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is.

  

  Malcolm Arnold
  • People
  • Music
  • Friendship

• I want to serve the people.

  

  Malala Yousafzai
  • People
  • Want
  • Serve

• What you wear onstage is a reflection of your artistry.

  

  Sabrina Carpenter
  • You
  • Reflection
  • Artistry

• After all my various relationships I find myself now home alone.

  

  Francesca Annis
  • Home
  • Alone
  • Myself

• There aren't always, especially in low-income communities, the arts and the dance and the drama and the things that can really show a kid, 'Look, even if I'm three years behind in math, there's something I'm good at that can help me be successful in life.'

  

  Vanessa Diffenbaugh
  • Life
  • Good
  • Help

• History is a race between education and catastrophe.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • History
  • Education
  • Race

• The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

  

  Walton Goggins
  • Life
  • Character
  • Action

• By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

  

  Charles Saatchi
  • Taken

• In my work with young Jewish adults in the gay community, I hear their stories of discrimination, of struggling for acceptance, of feeling invisible not for what they have done but simply for who they are.

  

  Lynn Schusterman
  • Work
  • Done
  • Feeling

• When I'm working on a book, I try to do eight pages a week. That seems like a good amount. Less than that, I'm not getting a nice momentum, and more than that, I'm probably putting out too much crap.

  Colson Whitehead
  • Good
  • Book
  • Nice