Mediocre Quotes - Page 16

• You don't want to spend your life writing about stuff that doesn't matter. You want to try to pull out of the temporal mediocre and write in a way that is meaningful to everybody. This goes back to this idea of being intimate with your reader. Since we're all down here and we're all dying and aspiring and loving and feeling inadequate, all these things that we all are doing all the time, what a relief it is, when somebody looks at you and says, "Yeah, me too."

  George Saunders

  Meaningful, Writing, Feelings

  "George Saunders: It's All About Suckage-Avoidance". Interview With Doug Polisin, www.audible.com. March 15, 2017.

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• Great directors turn in mediocre work and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know.

  Thomas Jane

  Directors, Want, Matter

  Source: collider.com

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• I think there are times when you're jamming with the universe, and other times when it feels like no matter how hard I work, no matter how good a person I am, I will always be punished for being mediocre.

  Mackenzie Davis

  Thinking, Being Me, Universe

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As time has gone on and we're at the end of the 20th century and major publishing is a big business, yes, of course we're going to get a lot of plain, mediocre trash. There are a lot of writers who get huge advances for books that don't go anywhere and they have to burn them somewhere or throw them away. I always think about all the poor trees that have been sacrificed.

  Ana Castillo

  Book, Thinking, Tree

  Source: www.english.illinois.edu

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• I want to be involved in things I can be really proud of. There's a lot of bad films being made and I don't understand how they got the money for it. That said, there's a lot of bad telly, but there's also a lot of very high quality that is something I'd be much more proud of than a mediocre film.

  Aisling Loftus

  Quality, Proud, Film

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Women, Equality, Males

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

  Simone Weil

  Teamwork, Taken, Sorrow

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.21, Routledge

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• Women right now, we can't make mediocre [stuff]. Men can and do make tons of mediocre stuff, but I feel like women.

  Abbi Jacobson

  Men, Stuff, Feels

  Source: www.elle.com

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• There is plenty of room in the world for mediocre men but there is no room for mediocre women.

  Madeleine Albright

  Men, World, Rooms

  Interview with Maeve Allsup, www.amwordmag.com. October 20, 2015.

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• I use really crazy subject matter, like all of those pictures of me throwing up and cutting myself, it's to make people think rather than be so mediocre. Instead of just seeing another girl with implants, I want to have meaning to what I do.

  Jeffree Star

  Girl, Crazy, Cutting

  Source: substreammagazine.com

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• Grass probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.

  George Carlin

  Hurt, Clever, Kids

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

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• I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.

  Kirsten Dunst

  Scripts, Filmmaker

  "Kirsten Dunst Relies on Intuition and Years of Experience to Serve the Role". Interview with Jessica Gardner, www.backstage.com. November 2, 2011.

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• Nobody wants to be in a mediocre organization. You don't have the same energy flowing through.

  Colin Powell

  Organization, Energy, Want

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

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• The failure to find the right niche for people - or to let them find their own perfect niches - is a major reason that so many workplaces are mediocre, even toxic, in spite of the presence of talent. Leaders of great groups give them whatever they need and free them from everything else.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Giving, Perfect, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• You can give a great film idea to a mediocre team and they may screw it up, but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will turn it into a great film.

  Edwin Catmull

  Team, Ideas, Giving

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are.

  George Carlin

  Clever, Kids, Pieces

  Source: reprints.longform.org

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• Many people functionally share this belief that work has no greater meaning than the paycheck it provides. A natural consequence of this faith commitment is the belief it's okay to do mediocre work so that in your free time you can enjoy your true passions.

  David Kim

  Passion, Commitment, People

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• I have so many girlfriends in their twenties who live in a white box apartment, having mediocre meals with mediocre friends, waiting for the life they want to hit them in their forties or fifties. They are settling in the now - what's the point?

  Daphne Oz

  Girlfriend, White, Waiting

  Interview with Rachel Goldstien, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

  Orson Welles

  Perfect, Refuge

  Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich (1992). “This is Orson Welles”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• A good song to one person could just be something mediocre to somebody else. It's always strange thinking about how songs connect with people.

  Lauren Mayberry

  Song, Thinking, People

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• For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero. No strive achieve personal celebrity of spotlight and applause. Lectures instructor, the state desires best ideal perform as mediocre. No gain attention showboat. No buffoon. Best effort so occur average. Suppress climbing ego. Become ordinary. Invisible.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Hero, Epic, Climbing

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• Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all.

  Katherine Paterson

  Husband, Writing, School

  Katherine Paterson (2001). “The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children”, Dutton Juvenile

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• If a legislator is safe from competition, or if he represents groups with the same economic and political beliefs, he does not have to change his ideas or respond to the needs of the broader population. He can rest content with a mediocre, absentee performance knowing he will be returned to office. And as he is returned year after year the seniority system gives him immense control over people from other parts of the country whose views he need not heed at all.

  Edward Kennedy

  Country, Views, Years

  Edward Moore Kennedy (1968). “Decisions for a Decade: Policies and Programs for the 1970s”, New American Library of Canada

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• He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.

  Thomas Mann

  Mediocrity, Honorable

  Thomas Mann (1995). “The magic mountain: a novel”, Random House, Inc.

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• [I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Careers, Culture, Citizens

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