Slate Quotes

• I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want.

  Tobey Maguire

  Want, Blank, I Can

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• I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

  Ben Kingsley

  Creativity, Creative, Trying

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• [London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic.... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Dirty, Sight, Sea

  V.S. Pritchett (2009). “Mr. Beluncle: A Novel”, p.13, Modern Library

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• The city and nature, the built stone and the found stone, concrete and slate, poetry addresses them all democratically.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Cities, Addresses, Stones

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• I've heard some designers talk about the design process being centred on invention, starting with a blank slate. I admire that and occasionally I'm capable of that, but I have to admit that I really have trouble working with completely open briefs.

  Michael Bierut

  Design Process, Trouble, Designer

  Source: facingsideways.com

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• I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Beautiful, Fun, Humble

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1975). “GIFT FROM THE SEA”

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• Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Opportunity, Succeed, Sometimes

  "Happiness: Should You Have Goals Or Resolutions?" by Gretchen Rubin, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 18, 2008.

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• So yesterday you fell off the wagon? Or maybe you blew your diet? Or lost your temper and shot off your mouth? Well, that was yesterday. Today is a brand-new day with a clean slate, so forget yesterday!

  Abigail Van Buren

  Yesterday, New Day, Today

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• Substantially fewer films will be produced over the next year or two. And a significant portion of the production costs of the reduced slate will be borne by hedge funds and other investment groups.

  Peter Bart

  Years, Two, Next

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• Who are we really? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random for some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply?Or the same soul, immortal and eternal, refurbished and reused through endless lives, by that thrifty Housekeeper? In Her wisdom and benevolence She wipes off the memory slates, as part of the cleaning process, because if we could remember all the things we have experienced in earlier lives, we might object to risking it again.

  Barbara Mertz

  Memories, Years, Soul

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• A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life.

  Allen Johnson

  Thinking, History, Ignorant

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• The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

  Alison Gopnik

  Brain, Stones, Blank

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• My parents, who were Communists, always pretended to be American patriots. You can always convince yourself you are: 'I love America, I just want it to be perfect, which it will be when it becomes a Soviet Communist state'. When the left called for 'liberation' what it really wanted was to erase the human slate and begin again. Like everybody else, I see things that need to be improved. I just am mindful of the fact that they can be made a lot worse.

  David Horowitz

  War, America, Perfect

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• America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

  Mary McCarthy

  Writing, Past, Men

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

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• Stepped out into the cold, collar high, under the slate gray sky. The air was smoking and the streets were dry, and I wasn't joking when I said goodbye.

  Ani DiFranco

  Goodbye, Air, Sky

  Song: Fire Door

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• I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

  Juan Cole

  Pigs, Use, Administration

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• A lot of people approach their barn or horse like they are going to war, because it's been going badly. So you pick up the next day in a defensive mode instead of cleaning the slate and starting fresh. Animals live so much in the moment, so if you're bringing baggage from yesterday you're already at a loss. We do that with people too.

  Cindy Meehl

  Horse, War, Loss

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• We are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us.

  Kim Stanley

  Inappropriate, Blank, Given

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• Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

  Jane Brody

  Children, Believe, Adoption

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• The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

  Mark Twain

  Girl, Skeletons, Lunch

  Mark Twain (1979). “Early Tales and Sketches 1864-1869”, p.235, Univ of California Press

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• I love the big fresh starts, the clean slates like birthdays and new years, but I also really like the idea that we can get up every morning and start over.

  Kristin Armstrong

  Birthday, New Year, Morning

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• Online, you have things like Slate Magazine, which has a lot of commentary and analysis of stories, so it gives you a fuller picture. I would compare that to a news magazine or the New Republic.

  Tabitha Soren

  Giving, Analysis, News

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• Regardless of your past, your tomorrow is a clean slate.

  Zig Ziglar

  Motivational, Future, Past

  FaceBook post by Zig Ziglar from Nov 25, 2014

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• When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you’re writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It’s sacred and it’s secret, even to the writer.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Hypnosis, Secret

  "Martin Amis, The Art of Fiction No. 151". Interview with Francesca Riviere, www.theparisreview.org. 1998.

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• If I don't think about anything, and start with a clean slate, in terms of what I have to do, a lot of different ideas come up, and I can think about things more openly.

  Namie Amuro

  Thinking, Ideas, Different

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