Margo Jefferson Ralph Ellison’s essays were models for me when I began my life as a critic. Slipping cultural yokes and violating aesthetic boundaries, he made criticism high-stakes work, especially for a black critic. – Margo Jefferson Aesthetic Quotes Black Quotes Boundaries Quotes Critic Quotes Criticism Quotes Cultural Quotes Ellisons Quotes Essays Quotes Highstakes Quotes Life Quotes Models Quotes Ralph Quotes Slipping Quotes Violating Quotes Yokes Quotes My mind is stuffed with quotes. Lines, couplets, paragraphs, stanzas; Bessie Smith, Stevie Smith, Tin Pan Alley, rock and roll. They tease or lead or hurl me into a dream space of jostling languages that I need to bask in each day in order to write. As the years pass, I find that writers who were once central to me aren’t anymore. I revered Yeats’s poetry in college. I respect it now and am still ravished by certain lines, but I don’t go back to him again and again. I do go back to Emily Dickinson again and again.
IndependenceSally Phillips I’m a big fan of community, and I think independence is over-rated. – Sally Phillips
Preston Brooks They had no right, as it seems to me, to prosecute me in these Halls; nor have you the right in law or under the Constitution, as I respectfully submit, to take jurisdiction over offenses committed against them. – Preston Brooks
Stephan Jenkins But when our first album came out, I didn’t think it was going to sell a lot of records. – Stephan Jenkins
Christopher Moore All of the trickster, rascal characters that I write have the voice I aspire to. In real life, you can’t be that obnoxious and get away with it. – Christopher Moore
ChanceDavid Millar People do make mistakes and I think they should be punished. But they should be forgiven and given the opportunity for a second chance. We are human beings. – David Millar
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