Up Quotes
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I became an author because I love words. I enjoyed playing with them when I was a kid, writing stories and plays, and doing whatever I could think to do with words. I kept my love of them growing up and still love to see what they can do.
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I was a teacher. I also worked at Harlem Children's Zone. I moved back to Baltimore and opened up an after-school, out-of-school program on the west side and then worked in two public school districts, in Baltimore and Minneapolis.
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I can't speak in too much detail about a book or story I'm working on because I find that it takes the energy out of my writing. When I begin to work, it's like a soda bottle that's been jostled before it's opened. There's a lot of pent up energy in there. I have to let it out slowly, carefully, so that I can turn it into a written work.
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I'm drawn to talented, creative people who often just don't know how to support themselves - they're more focused on their work than trying to figure that out. So I commission a lot of works with artists who I like personally or professionally, and through that process, I wound up collecting a lot of art.
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Whether we start with a provisional status and legal permanent residence... or we set up some other way to assimilate legally, you can't ever put in something that says, 'You can never become a citizen.' That's un-American.
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Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.
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People are already talking about the next presidential election. There's stories all over about who might run. At a recent speech, a prominent Democrat said that Hillary Clinton should not run because she can't win. Immediately after the speech, Hillary told her husband to shut up.
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You have to know why you get up every morning.
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I write all the time. The wonderful thing about having a cell phone is that if I get an idea, I knock it out and it's in my phone and I can transfer it to my computer and go into the studio and bring it up.
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You draw the best things from your parents and family. You're going to pick up some of the bad things as well - there's a temper that runs through my dad's side of the family that I'm not especially keen on picking up a giant block of.
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I painted the Astor-Victoria sign seven times, and it's 395 feet wide and 58 feet high. I dropped a gallon of purple paint on Seventh Avenue and 47th Street from 15 stories up and didn't kill anybody. I dropped a brush at Columbus Circle. It fell on a guy's camel-hair coat.
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I love when people are coming up and they're working hard and you can see that they're really focused on the process to their music. I really dig that. As a musician, it's nice to see people who really care about the process.
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Exporting oil would not drive up prices at the pump. American drivers buy refined products, which the U.S. already exports. Many studies - from a range of institutions and government agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Energy Information Administration - have shown that lifting the export ban could actually lower gas prices.
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I was such a Jewish princess. My whole life was leading up to marrying a rich man and living on 48th Street.
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Mary, my little girl, was confirmed in a Buddhist temple. She saw the Life write up on Buddhism, with pictures of the ceremony, and she said she wanted to be confirmed there because she only liked Jesus as a kid. She was a little disappointed in him when he grew up.
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There may be a perception that, with franchises, they're all the same, so that limits the ability to experiment. But that's not true. We've always kept two slots open on the menu of each Subway franchise - slots that franchisees can use to come up with their own sandwich ideas.
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If you desire something, you don't have it. It is more interesting than enjoyment, because enjoyment erases the mysteries and the vision of desire. Desire opens up possibilities but never achieves anything, whereas enjoyment is just the brutal achievement of something - and after that, it's done.
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I grew up with the Highwaymen, which was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Mom and Dad rode rodeo, so country music was always in the house and the car. They threw in some Dolly Parton, too.
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My world was small growing up. I never really left the three-mile radius of my tiny neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
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The pressure is all self-imposed, and it's to live up to the expectations of people who are going to shell out their hard-earned cash to listen to the music. It's actually more than that, though. I wouldn't want to make a record that didn't live up to my expectations.
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One of the most beautiful things that recruited me to join the LaRouche movement is its emphasis on Classical singing and composition, especially with the Negro Spirituals, adding a new depth of profundity to songs I had sang while growing up.
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What I like to do is get the family in the pick-up truck... and then we just go for a drive. That's it!
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When I think about how I grew up sleeping on a cot in the hallway in a one-bedroom apartment in Flatbush, it's been a great life. I can't complain.
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When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.
