I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Ben Okri

Always Been Began Evolved

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The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.

Steve Jobs

Heavy Success Light Begin

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Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Steve Jobs

Life People Influence Build

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I know I was a generic dysfunctional child, but I think a lot of people are.

Henry Rollins

Dysfunctional Child People Generic

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Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.

Henry Rollins

Sellout Trenches Down.People Most

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Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did.

Adele

Heartbreak Definitely Deeper Sensibility

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To me, getting muscular was the first thing I ever achieved by working at it, and it was a game changer for me, because it was the first time I ever had confidence.

Henry Rollins

Working Game Changer Confidence

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After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.

Henry Rollins

After Join Band Flag

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I was a very repressed young person. I wasn't good at school. I didn't fit in.

Henry Rollins

Was Repressed Person School

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The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

Henry Rollins

Classmates Flinch Gesture Afraid

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I always thought our problem was our leaders until I joined politics and realized the people are also a big part of the problem.

Yul Edochie

Always Problem Thought Leaders

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I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?

Walt Whitman

Said Several Thousand Universe

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Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.

Walt Whitman

Advance Behind Fools Go

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Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Walt Whitman

AlsoBattles Day Fall Gain

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The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

Walter Scott

Raise Invention Eyes

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I no longer buy papers or tabloids or magazines or read blogs. I used to. But it was just filling up my day with hatred.

Adele

Longer Buy Papers Tabloids

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I just want to make music, I don't want people to talk about me. All I've ever wanted to do was sing. I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want to be in people's faces, you know, constantly on covers of magazine that I haven't even known I'm on.

Adele

Just Want Music People

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I was adopting an Ethiopian child, that's not true. My house was haunted, that wasn't true. God, there's been so many rumours.

Adele

Adopting Ethiopian Child True

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As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

Henry Rollins

Road Playing Music Shoved

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There's tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.

Henry Rollins

Arguments People Choose Waste

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I'm not into fame. I'm not into making money, outside of financing my books. I'm not into status. My thing is basically about time - not wasting it.

Henry Rollins

Status Basically Wasting Financing

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The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Buchi Emecheta

African Approve Book Bride

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I think Naomi Klein was very astute with her book 'Shock Doctrine.' We make money on disaster.

Henry Rollins

Shock Doctine Money Disaster

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I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

Henry Rollins

Fraud Fool Audience Onstage

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I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when Bhutto was assassinated, and the next day, you know, there's just plumes of smoke everywhere. I mean, Islamabad is on fire.

Henry Rollins

Plumes Islamabad Fire Smoke

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This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Love String Significance Miracle

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Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Around Often Power Felt

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I hate painting with a broad brush, but I think the birther thing, at its root, is racist. The guy was born in Hawaii. A black guy is president. It's cool. Get over it. Just deal with it. There's nothing you could show these birther people that would shut them up.

Henry Rollins

Painting Racist Black President

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We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Often Each Answer Question

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The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.

Will Rogers

Never School Used

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There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

Will Rogers

Educated Get He Him

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When you got born again your past was not erased, it became non-existent.

Chris Oyakhilome

Born Past Became Erased

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I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

Henry Rollins

Fiction Younger Ray Bradbury Man

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I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.

Henry Rollins

Minimum-Wages Working World Life

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When you're holding people's attention, I feel you must give them high-quality ingredients. They deserve nothing but your best. And if they need information, get it, cross-check it, and try to be right. Do not waste their time; do not enjoy the ego trip of being onstage.

Henry Rollins

Waste Enjoy Being Onstage

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The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

Henry Rollins

Hairdresser Album Still First

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Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.

Henry Rollins

Drummer Natural Musician Brilliant

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I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.

Henry Rollins

Records Time Better Since

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My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long - the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.

Henry Rollins

Long Knocked Absurdity Intensity

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My parents have been there for me, ever since I was about 7.

David Beckham

About Been Ever Me

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I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father.

Will Rogers

After Calling Father George

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I wasn't as fit as I would of liked to have been, going to the World Cup, but I'm not sure what difference that made.

David Beckham

Been Cup Difference Fit

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Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.

W. C. Fields

Closed Last Philadelphia Week

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It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.

W. C. Fields

Courtesy Drink Drove Had

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Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.

Henry Rollins

Camus Prolific Sceaming Keep

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I know that living with me was not a bowl of cherries.

Steve Jobs

Know Live Bowl Cherries

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As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

Henry Rollins

Limited Appreciation Intensed Scope

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Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.

Henry Rollins

Trying Kill Different Cold

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Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

Henry Rollins

Universal Respected Genres Universal

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In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.

Henry Rollins

Group Ground Broken Stopped

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" Quotes and Sayings About was

I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Ben Okri

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.

Steve Jobs

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Steve Jobs

I know I was a generic dysfunctional child, but I think a lot of people are.

Henry Rollins

Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.

Henry Rollins

Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did.

Adele

To me, getting muscular was the first thing I ever achieved by working at it, and it was a game changer for me, because it was the first time I ever had confidence.

Henry Rollins

After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.

Henry Rollins

I was a very repressed young person. I wasn't good at school. I didn't fit in.

Henry Rollins

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

Henry Rollins

I always thought our problem was our leaders until I joined politics and realized the people are also a big part of the problem.

Yul Edochie

I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?

Walt Whitman

Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.

Walt Whitman

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Walt Whitman

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

Walter Scott

I no longer buy papers or tabloids or magazines or read blogs. I used to. But it was just filling up my day with hatred.

Adele

I just want to make music, I don't want people to talk about me. All I've ever wanted to do was sing. I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want to be in people's faces, you know, constantly on covers of magazine that I haven't even known I'm on.

Adele

I was adopting an Ethiopian child, that's not true. My house was haunted, that wasn't true. God, there's been so many rumours.

Adele

As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

Henry Rollins

There's tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.

Henry Rollins

I'm not into fame. I'm not into making money, outside of financing my books. I'm not into status. My thing is basically about time - not wasting it.

Henry Rollins

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Buchi Emecheta

I think Naomi Klein was very astute with her book 'Shock Doctrine.' We make money on disaster.

Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins

I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when Bhutto was assassinated, and the next day, you know, there's just plumes of smoke everywhere. I mean, Islamabad is on fire.

Henry Rollins

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I hate painting with a broad brush, but I think the birther thing, at its root, is racist. The guy was born in Hawaii. A black guy is president. It's cool. Get over it. Just deal with it. There's nothing you could show these birther people that would shut them up.

Henry Rollins

We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Will Rogers

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

Will Rogers

When you got born again your past was not erased, it became non-existent.

Chris Oyakhilome

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

Henry Rollins

I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.

Henry Rollins

When you're holding people's attention, I feel you must give them high-quality ingredients. They deserve nothing but your best. And if they need information, get it, cross-check it, and try to be right. Do not waste their time; do not enjoy the ego trip of being onstage.

Henry Rollins

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

Henry Rollins

Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.

Henry Rollins

I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.

Henry Rollins

My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long - the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.