Colson Whitehead Quotes
The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well.Colson Whitehead
Quotes to Explore
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The biggest issue that we have to contend with is campaign finance reform.
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I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.
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Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
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How do you play 'righteous'? Do you just kind of stand up straighter? What does that mean as an actor? You don't really play a quality.
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It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
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My parents were both entrepreneurs.
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I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.
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We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it.
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Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.
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It's different for every project. Some parts are quicker than others to get and know; sometimes right up until the last moment you're just praying that something will click. But you can only do a certain amount of work and then at some point you've got to think: 'OK, I'm just going to have to leap now.'
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I hope that none of the countries in the Middle East are planning anything but the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy.
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I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
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Thou shalt free thyself from convention, from everyday morality.
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If I'm saying a universal truth, but maybe it's something that people don't feel comfortable saying... It's a strange take, but at the same time, what you're hitting on is kind of right. You can relate. That's the heart of comedy. You have to have a point of view. You gotta commit. And the more you commit to it, sometimes the funnier it gets.
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And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.
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Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.
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My first gig was a Corn Pops commercial. I did the first Vanilla Coke campaign. A Juicy Fruit commercial paid my bills for years.
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Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer.
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The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds. A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why, The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.
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I'm sure I wouldn't have been asked to judge the Man Booker if it weren't for 'Downton.'
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I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them; I will always love them.
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Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
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No pharmaceutical company is making money by selling biological knowledge - they make money by selling chemicals. So getting as much of that knowledge as possible into the efficiency of the Web-commerce world is going to make it faster to find those chemicals.
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The terror of figuring out a new genre, of telling a new story, is what makes the job exciting, keeps me from getting bored, and I assume it keeps whoever follows my work from getting bored as well.
Colson Whitehead
