Essays Quotes - Page 8

• When you write an essay, of course you're going to get pushback, but you're going to be allowed to make your case at leisure. You're going to be allowed to take into account possible objections and to fully humanize your reader. That feels to me like a much more sane thing to do.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Leisure, Cases

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Another [book on Matthew] is Amy-Jill Levine, who is a Jewish woman who teaches New Testament at the Vanderbilt School of Religion. It's a group of essays by mostly womanly scholars looking at Matthew's gospel through feminists' eyes - very exciting. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about.

  John Shelby Spong

  Book, Eye, School

  Source: www.thinkpiecepublishing.com

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• If you were an actor, anybody could go on Broadway and take a George Carlin hour and do it on stage as a one man show. They're all stand alone essays.

  Jay Mohr

  Men, Actors, Goes On

  Source: underthegunreview.net

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• The Babson Institute, which is now an actual university, was started by this guy [my father] who also had a problem with believing in gravity. And so he started the Babson Institute in New Boston, New Hampshire, which then moved to Gloucester. Each year they have a competition of one thousand dollars for one thousand words of an essay on gravity. That's the way they do it.

  Paul Laffoley

  Father, Believe, Boston

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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• Some of the exuberance of my essay-writing has gone because I'm worried about the uses they could serve.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Gone, Use

  Source: ctheory.net

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• When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way your writing has been used.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Hot, Pages

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Talking, People

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I'm interested in the possibility of fiction which straddles narrative and essay.

  Susan Sontag

  Fiction, Narrative, Possibility

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I wrote an essay too, and mine started something like, "When I was asked to contribute to this book, I said, 'I could do a piece on [Larry] Kramer as a pain in the ass, but I suppose you have too many of those, as it is.'" And Sarah's began something like, "When I read about America's angriest AIDS activist, I can't believe they are talking about my sweet Uncle Larry."

  Kevin Sessums

  Sweet, Uncles, Pain

  Source: fourtwonine.com

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• About 70% of what I've written about is centered on the clashes and conformities between the emerging life and physical sciences and older metaphysical frameworks in the 17th and 18th centuries. The other 30% consists of one-off essays or researches into other intriguing contemporary topics such as visual experience, aesthetics, social justice issues, and the epistemology of moral knowledge.

  Catherine Wilson

  Issues, Justice, Research

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.

  Stephen Vincent Benet

  School, Graduates, Form

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I don't want to see any art-writing gobbledygook or overblown words in an essay about me. If a smaller, simpler word will do - use it.

  Doris McCarthy

  Art, Writing, Use

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• When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

  David Foster Wallace

  Writing, Trying, Juggernaut

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• Boulez, who is everything I don't want art to be... Boulez, who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only how it is made.

  Morton Feldman

  Art, Sound, Pieces

  Morton Feldman (2006). “Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987”

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• The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Drama, Energy, Way

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• From its aptly noirish title on, Martin Preib's The Wagon has rightness of authenticity about it. From the perspective of a cop he fashions a compelling view of the Chicago Algren once called 'the dark city.' There's a unique quality to his essays which manage to be broodingly meditative even as their narrative drive keeps you turning pages.

  Stuart Dybek

  Fashion, Dark, Unique

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• Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.

  Deborah Harkness

  Together, Fundamentals, Provocative

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• Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us. A photograph of an art object is not the art object. An essay about an artist's work is not the artist's work.

  Carl Andre

  Art, Culture, Done

  Carl Andre, James Sampson Meyer (2005). “Cuts: Texts 1959-2004”, p.30, MIT Press

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• The essay form has superceded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralysing dread.

  Adam Parfrey

  Gestalt, Able, Talismans

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• Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

  E. B. White

  Writing, Self, Stamina

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• I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Heart, Mind

  "Afropolitan Author Talks Fractured Family Ties in ‘Ghana Must Go’". Interview with Patrice Peck, www.ebony.com. May 2, 2013.

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• Remember that as a vegan, you save dozens of animals every year from the horrors of factory farms, which is great. And when you convince one person to also become vegan, in that moment you double your lifetime impact as a vegan! That's power - and we should use it as effectively as possible. Check out the 'Be a better advocate' videos and essays at www.FarmSanctuary.org.

  Bruce Friedrich

  Animal, Impact, Years

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• I believe that almost all important, useful ideas are simple. Peter Whittle has recently put it nicely in an autobiographical essay. "If a piece of work is heavy and complicated then it is wrong." . . . Some writers feel that to express their ideas in simple terms is degrading. Some use complexity to disguise the paucity of their material. In fact, simplicity is a virtue and when, as here, it is both original and useful, it can represent a real advance in knowledge.

  Dennis Lindley

  Real, Work, Believe

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• An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.

  Amy Hempel

  Ideas, Stories, Might

  "A Long Time Coming". Interview with Rob Hart, chuckpalahniuk.net. August 27, 2008.

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• All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge.

  Geoff Dyer

  Ignorance, Journey, Curiosity

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