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W Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All W Quotes

“When I was thinking about How Poetry Saved My Life entering the “big literary world” I more so viewed it as sub genre or an underdog book because there are still comparatively so few books about sex work, especially from authors who once worked street, like I have. Disclosing to working street-level sex work still feels risky to me. Apart from Runaway by Evelyn Lau (published in 1989) I have yet to read a first person memoir about street work. More of these stories must be out there—perhaps I just haven’t found them yet.”

Sex WorkStreet Sex WorkSurvival Sex Work
Author:Amber Dawn
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“When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.”

ThinkingKnowsTryingPersonsMatterCharacterUseWould BeSeeingColorMalesLimitationSexismRepresentation
Author:Junot Diaz
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“When I was thinking about what we could do in terms of what production values of Broadway might be able to add to the show, I had this thought that it would be really cool if we had a coup de théâtre. What would they want? And then I was like, an amazing, enormous tuna puppet that was like 30 by 40 feet would be pretty incredible. So I called up Basil Twist, and he got really excited immediately and started sketching out his idea, and I think it's a real highlight of the show.”

IfsThinkingWantIdeasRealShowsMightWould BeAbleValuesTermFeetAddIncrediblesProductionsExcitedEnormousBeing RealBroadwayTwistsReally CoolPuppetsHighlightsSketchingCoupsTunaBasil
Author:Alex Timbers
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“When I was thirteen, I had a nervous breakdown, and I was put into this grown-up mental hospital with all these 50-, 60-year-old men and women. This big, Victorian mental house. There were like five boys in there, all my age, looked after by this woman who was 22 or 23. And it was like "Empire of the Sun" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type of arrangement where you've got this young boy overcoming and becoming heroic in the face of this awful place.”

MenYearsBigsAgeFacesYoungHouseBoysSunFiveTypeBecomingMen And WomenOvercomingNervousAwfulEmpiresHospitalsOld ManHeroicArrangementsNestsFlewBreakdownThirteenVictorianCuckoosNervous BreakdownOne Flew Over The Cuckoo's NestEmpire Of The Sun
Author:Duncan Roy
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“When I was three years old, I went to an orphanage, but because of the beatings, I ran away when I was five and lived alone by selling gum on the streets. For ten years, I lived like a fly. I was eventually able to graduate elementary and middle school through qualification examinations and the first thing that I ever liked was music.”

YearsFirstsAbleSchoolThreeFiveStreetsMiddleTenSellingRanThree YearsGraduatesExaminationQualificationsGumMiddle SchoolOrphanageThree Year Olds
Author:Choi Sung-bong
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“When I was three, I fell and I got Bell's palsy in my face. My mom said the first day she called the rabbi, and he said a prayer for me but nothing happened. The second day she called the Mormons, and they said a prayer for me and my face was healed, so my whole life was going around as a Jew who was giving talks in Mormon churches about being healed by the Mormons.”

GivingFirstsSaidWholeFacesThreeChurchPrayerHappenedMomJewMy MomWhole LifeBellsThey SaidHealedRabbi
Author:Roseanne Barr
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“When I was touring with my Vladimir Putin biography, which was published all over the world, people would ask me, How come you're still there, why haven't you left? I would say, I'm staying, it's my home. He can leave! It felt very good to say that. But now - he wins. It's not natural for people in the opposition to leave. It's always a personal catastrophe. And yet he's gotten people out of the country. That's the most terrifying thing about the current situation, and for the future of the country.”

PeopleWorldCountryHomeWinningNaturalSituationVery GoodAsk MeCatastrophe
Author:Masha Gessen
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“When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me.”

FirstsKindPersonsEndsUseRaceRightsMovementRelationCivil RightsJournalistHidingElectricReportersForbiddenRace RelationsCoveringCivil Rights MovementFirst PersonFrightNashvillePronouns
Author:Lawrence Wright
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“When I was trying to figure out why lives have improved so much in the last 300 years, where we've gone from a third of kids dying before 5 to - by 1990 it was down to 10% - now it's down to 5%. And saying why, over all history, there were smart people, but that number didn't change. Average life span didn't change. What's magical about what's been deemed the Industrial Revolution? It's really energy intensity.”

PeopleTryingYearsKidsLastsEnergyNumbersGoneDyingFiguresRevolutionSmartThirdsAverageIntensitySmart PeopleIndustrial RevolutionLife SpanAverage Life
Author:Bill Gates
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“When I was trying to impress Kate, I was trying to cook these amazing fancy dinners and what would happen was I would burn something, something would overspill, something would catch on fire and she would be sitting in the background trying to help, and basically taking control of the whole situation, so I was quite glad she was there at the time.”

TryingWholeHelpingHappensWould BeSituationFireSittingDinnerGladBackgroundsCooksFancyImpressKate
Author:Prince William
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“When I was trying to popularize the concept of the Internet - ten or 15 years ago - I came up with this concept of "the 5 Cs." Services needed to have content, context, community, commerce, and connectivity. After that, when I was trying to think of what the key management principles were to build into the culture, I started talking about the Ps. The P's were things like passion, perseverance, perspective and people. I think the people aspect is really the most important one.”

PeopleThinkingTryingYearsImportantCulturePassionCommunityBusinessTalkingPrinciplesPerspectiveKeysInternetNeededTenConceptsAspectYears AgoManagementPerseveranceCommerce
Author:Steve Case
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“When I was twelve, Flip came through Reno and gave out autographs at a casino. I didn't have a glossy photo for him to sign, so I had him sign my hand. For weeks I took a shower with a plastic bag over that hand, rubbed-banded at the wrist. It wasn't quite a romantic infatuation. There are levels of readiness. Young girls don't entertain the idea of sex, their body and another's together. That comes later, but there isn't nothing before it. There's an innocent displacement, a dreaming, and idols are perfect for a little girl's dreaming. They aren't real. They aren't the gas station attendant trying to lure you into the back of the service station, a paperboy trying to lure you into a tool-shed, a friend's father trying to lure you into his car. They don't lure. They beckon, but like desert mirages. Flip Farmer was safely unreachable. He was something special. I chose him from among all the men in the world, and he signed the back of my hand and smiled with very white, straight teeth. He gave us each that same smile, the children and adults who lined up at Hannah's. We weren't individuals but a surface he moved over, smiling and remote. The thing was, if he had returned my gaze, I probably would have washed his autograph from my hand.”

Autograph
Author:Rachel Kushner
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“When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was none of your mensa-a-table, this was a flash from a forbidden planet, and it was everywhere. History was sex, French was sex, art was sex, the Bible, poetry, penfriends, games, music, everything was sex except biology which was obviously sex but not really sex, not the one which was secret and ecstatic and wicked and a sacrament and all the things it was supposed to be but couldn't be at one and the same time - I got that in the boiler room and it turned out to be biology after all.”

LoveSexEducationVirginity
Author:Tom Stoppard
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“When I was twelve, my sixth-grade English class went on a field trip to see Franco Zeffirelli’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. From that moment forward I dreamed that someday I’d meet my own Juliet. I’d marry her and I would love her with the same passion and intensity as Romeo. The fact that their marriage lasted fewer than three days before they both were dead didn’t seem to affect my fantasy. Even if they had lived, I don’t think their relationship could have survived. Let’s face it, being that emotionally aflame, sexually charged, and transcendentally eloquent every single second can really start to grate on a person’s nerves. However, if I could find someone to love just a fraction of the way that Montague loved his Capulet, then marrying her would be worth it.”

LoveSchoolRomanceMarriageFantasyCoupleMarriedRomanticTragedyIntenseCrushTragicJulietCompatibleCompatibilityRomeo And JulietRomeoChildhood Crush
Author:Annabelle Gurwitch
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“When I was twelve, one of two things happened. First, I became obsessed with spirituality./ I don’t have clear recollections of this early teen spiritual search. I don’t know how I found these alternate places of worship, pre-Internet. I asked mom. She doesn’t know either. I can only assume I researched using the Yellow Pages, and junk mail./ I point out this nexus - between my spiritual yearning and anxiety - because it’s helped me understand my restlessness ever since. Anxiety and existential curiosity are connected. Yes, absolutely, it can become medical when it spirals out too far. But its origins are far more fundamental./ i’ve done this since my early teens - revisited my spirituality on and off. And it’s always occurred in tandem with my anxiety. Indeed, I listed the help of a spiritual counsellor during this time.”

SpiritualityAnxietyLife PurposePilgrimageInner Calling
Author:Sarah Wilson
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“When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.”

YearsPersonsPhilosophyGodAbleOrderFatherSonDevilOppositesOddTwelveContemplatingTrinityInference
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.”

ThinkingWorldSaidMightWantedFoundGrewGrew UpUnderstoodPhilosopherCandidatesTwelveClownSeriousness
Author:Judith Butler
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