Colson Whitehead Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Failure is success if we learn from it.
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I have a song about being in love. I have a song about being supportive. There's inspiring ones, and there's some that show a little bit more fun and daring. It really is a range of who I am.
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Movies are usually difficult, often insane, constantly challenging and always strangely amusing to make.
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I got a telegraph from my mother who said that my step-father had had a heart attack, come home and earn a living. So I went back to England and the only thing I knew to earn any cash was through hairdressing.
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The American people need to tell their member of Congress that we need a strong defense to protect us and to prevent wars. We can't get away with simply leading from behind and gutting our defenses.
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I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.
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There are moments when I can't believe I'm as old as I am. But I feel better physically than I did 10 years ago. I don't think, Oh God, I'm missing something.
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Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically.
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Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?
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In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.
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I had this little Bon Iver phase a few years back; 'Flume' was one of my favourite songs.
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I can remember loving to recruit. I knew I was going to do my best. But traveling and recruiting doesn't appeal to me any more. It's not as much fun as it used to be.
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I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.
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It's hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones.
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The most common criticism I've seen is that I write 'popcorn fantasy:' lightweight action-adventure. Some people call it that as they explain why they love it for exactly that reason. I'm cool with that, either way. I just nod and let it go.
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I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.
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I still feel I need to do things 10 times better than other players. Just to be accepted and to improve myself.
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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.
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You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.
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What got me motivated was my dad's idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It's an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C's and D's to straight A's by the time I left.
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Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'
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I was born in the U.S., my wife was born in Mexico and emigrated here when she was in college, and my daughters were born in New York City. That makes them passport-carrying, natural-born, eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But they're also Mexicans and they like that just fine.
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I learned from my Adventist upbringing that the biggest sins were sexual.
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In college, I wrote maybe three short stories.
Colson Whitehead
