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All Quotes by author - David Antin
" A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars. "
White
Lie
Man
" Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying. "
Saying
Over
Learn
" Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real. "
Out
Fortune
Businessman
" For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting. "
Like
Any
Lyrics
" From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us. "
Entertainment
Protect
Us
" I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate. "
Quite
Unsatisfied
I Am
" I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James. "
Than
I Can
Closer
" I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand. "
Thinking
Think
Understand
" I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know. "
College
Valley
Know
" I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. "
Remember
Poetry
Thought
" I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore. "
Want
Expert
Audience
" I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember. "
Through
Remember
Meaningless
" I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus. "
Thinking
Believe
Help
" I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions. "
Sure
Questions
Pursuit
" I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go. "
Happy
Listen
Thinking
" I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out. "
Damn
Doing
Dog
" I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred. "
Secular
Casual
Sacred
" It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel. "
Somebody
Being
Character
" I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty. "
Feeling
Strong
Always
" I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton. "
Thought
Thinking
Maybe
" I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding. "
Understanding
Giving
Trying
" I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker. "
Like
Kind
Process
" My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldn't understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer. "
Thought
Mother
Professional
" My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it. "
Entertainment
Rejection
Idea
" My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path. "
Way
Thinking
Path
" Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives. "
You
Different
Possible
" The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. "
Muse
Remember
Anxiety
" There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. "
Editing
Just
Jazz
" There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be. "
Right
Society
Left
" The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin. "
Past
Self
Society
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