Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Pessimists are born, true, but they also can be made. "
David Rakoff
Also
Born
Made
Related Quotes:
" Everyone has an internal age, a time in life when one is, if not one's best, then at very least one's most authentic self. I always felt that my internal clock was calibrated somewhere between 47 and 53 years old. "
David Rakoff
Time
Clock
Life
" I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that's such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself. "
David Rakoff
Little
Going
Lie
" Arts and crafts, or getting to be in a play with people, or making a little short film, that's pure sugar, because the stakes are so low. "
David Rakoff
Film
Sugar
Short
" I can see a great beauty in acknowledging the fact that the world is dark. "
David Rakoff
I Can
Beauty
Dark
" Deprived of the opportunity to judge one another by the cars we drive, New Yorkers, thrown together daily on mass transit, form silent opinions based on our choices of subway reading. Just by glimpsing the cover staring back at us, we can reach the pinnacle of carnal desire or the depths of hatred. Soul mate or mortal enemy. "
David Rakoff
Daily
Opportunity
Reading
" At least three times a week, I am overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude to New York City for providing me with a life. Not that my life is so great, although I think it's pretty nifty: I don't mine coal; I get paid to write. "
David Rakoff
I Am
Gratitude
New York
" About the only thing that I have - or had, because it's failing me lately - is my memory. I had a really good memory. I was always terribly protective of that fact. "
David Rakoff
Me
Memory
Always
" 'Play It Again Sam's opening shot is the same as 'Purple Rose's final one: a close-up of a face, rapt in a movie house. I've certainly felt that in my life. I've been known to cry watching Gene Kelly. "
David Rakoff
Life
Face
Play
" I do not go outdoors... As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach. "
David Rakoff
New York
City
Outdoors
" Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Well, of course not Adam and Steve. Never Adam and Steve. It's Adam and Steven. "
David Rakoff
Adam And Eve
Never
Course
" I don't particularly consider myself an actor. I have no training. I love doing it, but I would never consider myself to be a colleague of an actual actor. That would be stepping way up in class on my part. "
David Rakoff
Up
Training
Love
" I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that. "
David Rakoff
Lie
Find
Done
" I have no problem with animals, I just like people more. "
David Rakoff
More
Animals
Like
" I value kindness in myself and others. I try to remain super-vigilant about my targets and make extra sure that my sometimes barbed comments are deserved and in response to genuine malefaction. "
David Rakoff
Sometimes
Myself
Kindness
" Everyone I vote for never wins. Welcome to America. "
David Rakoff
Welcome
Never
Everyone
" I do tend to be an anxious fellow, and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news. I appreciate honesty. "
David Rakoff
World
Appreciate
Honesty
" The rigors of creativity - the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude - do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn't for everyone. "
David Rakoff
Everyone
Creativity
Kind
" It's the false moral component behind blind animal love that so frosts me. The faulty logic that believes that the capacity to adore a nonhuman creature is somehow a purer form of love. "
David Rakoff
Me
Moral
Blind
" I will forever be grateful to my oncologist for opening the door and saying, 'Damn it, the tumor's 10 percent bigger,' before he even said hello. "
David Rakoff
Saying
Opening
Grateful
" It's rare that I'm not at work on some sort of craft project. I've often enthused about the need to make things; how it employs a unique set of muscles - physical, intellectual, spiritual - that I can attain a state of flow when making something that I almost never can when writing. "
David Rakoff
Spiritual
Writing
Work
" I'm not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity - or that's the hope, at least - a kind of grudging respect for human frailty. Unless it's actually kicking human frailty while it's down - I'm not sure. "
David Rakoff
Respect
Humanity
World
" Fantastic days are what you wish upon those who have so few sunrises left, those whose lungs are so lesion-spangled with new cancer that they should be embracing as much life as they can. Time's a-wasting, go out and have yourself a fantastic day! Fantastic days are for goners. "
David Rakoff
Life
Wish
You
" A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn't make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay doesn't make one witty... the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. "
David Rakoff
Parents
Hate
Art
" Unless one is planning to go shopping - basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple Grandin - then Boxing Day feels like a bar after last call when the lights have been turned up. "
David Rakoff
Day
Shopping
Planning
" I'm anti-religious. I don't like people telling me what to do. "
David Rakoff
Telling
Like
Me
" There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking. "
David Rakoff
Thinking
Optimism
Nothing
" I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about how or why or when the next project will come into being beyond simply acknowledging that it is inevitable that it will be very soon. "
David Rakoff
Person
Why
Writing
" Those weeks before diagnosis can be among the most torturous times. There is a reason you're called a patient once the plastic bracelet goes on. "
David Rakoff
Before
Patient
Plastic
" Not far from my apartment, within a stretch of no more than 500 feet, there are two doggie gyms where Gotham's canines who aren't getting enough exercise running through the city's parks, or are neglecting their all-important doggie glutes and abs, can go for a workout. What can I say? This appalls me. "
David Rakoff
Feet
Say
Enough
" My salvation lies in time spent alone with an X-Acto knife and commercial-grade adhesive. "
David Rakoff
Salvation
Time
Alone