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All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists by Terry Gross
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“The problem is that those of us who are lucky enough to do work that we love are sometimes cursed with too damn much of it.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“I also often ask my guests about what they consider to be their invisible weaknesses and shortcomings. I do this because these are the characteristics that define us no less than our strengths. What we feel sets us apart from other people is often the thing that shapes us as individuals. This may be especially true of writers and actors, many of whom first started to develop their observational skills as a result of being sidelined from typical childhood or adolescent activities because of an infirmity or a feeling of not fitting in. Or so I’ve come to believe from talking to so many writers and actors over the years.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“I’ve never liked euphemisms. I don’t say “passed away.” I say “dead.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“invisible weaknesses and shortcomings. I do this because these are the characteristics that define us no less than our strengths. What we feel sets us apart from other people is often the thing that shapes us as individuals.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“Of comfort no man speak. Let’s talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs. Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.” I”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“Craft goes only so far in explaining how an artist uses his gift, and the gift itself is often inexplicable. Autobiography provides an alternate route—a seeming detour that may ultimately tell us something about an artist’s sensibility and the experiences that shaped it.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“Having a kid, or supplying the sperm to fertilize an egg, and then not being around to offer support or guidance, doesn’t give you the right to say, “I’m your father.” You can say, “I’m the guy who made you,” but that’s about it.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“If you concentrate, there is something that emanates from you, and that’s what the great photographer photographs. Diana Vreeland says, “There is no beauty without emotion.” I think that is the responsibility of a model.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“the words become inevitable through my connection with their meaning,”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“I said, “No, you’re physically challenged. You’re breathing hard from climbing the stairs. I’m disabled.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“If I’m anything, I’m not a singer, I’m a song stylist.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists
“The most feasible way of getting a woman to go to bed with you was to marry her.”
Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists