M.K. Alexander Quotes

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.

With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.

I was trying to make a novel about something no one wanted to read about into something they couldn't put down or look away from.

The ideal editor will hold you to the best of yourself in the piece.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

The idea of a talent that was bigger than an artist's ability to choose to use it, that would dictate the artist's life more than the artist could dictate, was interesting to me.

I've been told it's hard to write about singing. I didn't realize that going into it. I might not have tried if I knew!

One of my big inspirations was Céleste Mogador. She was a courtesan who wrote her memoirs in order to pay off her debts, which is a hilarious gesture.

The way some were entrapped into lives of prostitution, the way that something like marriage could rob them of their rights.

I realized that my identity as a novelist was private. Only I knew how much of a novelist I was!

The secret to being a rider in the hippodrome wasn't that you must be agile, or that you must be good with horses...It was that you must hide inside your costume a little of a killer's heart.

Are you more likely to tolerate drivel than you were four years ago? I think the answer is yes. Four years of Reagan has deadenedthe senses against a barrage of uninterrupted nonsense.

No one believes for a moment the embargo will prompt the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein.

No foundation that I am aware of has hired ex-journalists to promote a thoroughgoing inquiry.

Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.

There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend.

There is no single way to train, or do anything well. You have to keep thinking, keep doing things.

In my world, I am one of the luckiest humans alive.

I have always had the sea as my playground.

So this is all part of a free society. People are entitled to hold whatever view they want, and the media can report things how they wish.

Yeah, well I'm not aspiring to be the Prime Minister.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

I hate to spoil my own prospects, but I really don't respect the kiss-and-tell approach to public life at all, not at all.

If people are concerned about my house and where I live again it's much more of a reflection on them than it is on me.

My father had the same name as me but he was known as Alec. He was a member of the House of Representatives.

Yes, I don't think I shall ever become Prime Minister. Hard as that is to swallow, I tell you one person who is very happy always to see me say that, and that's my wife.

So-called restoration is at least as tricky as brain surgery. Most pictures expire under scalpel and sponge.

But nobody can run from their own demons.

Don't make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.

Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.

There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace.

And when reality denies you the tools you need for survival you grab them from wherever you can.

Nobody cares. You shouldn't either.

One last breath. We all have to take one eventually. It was over.

Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job.

And when reality goes, sanity has no reason.

I helped you because you're new, and because when there's two people in a cell then there's only a fifty percent chance they'll take you.

Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.

That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?

Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.

It's one of the things I love most about being an author - seeing the different covers from each country.

When you get into a film, it is one story and one set development of a character, and you are able to delve into one character for a short period of time and discover everything about them.

I'm the only American alive or dead who presided unhappily over the removal of a vice president and a president.

I think that perhaps the classic propagandists of the - in the Second World War was Winston Churchill. He was extremely skilled and adept at it.

Propaganda was an important arm of the Soviet diplomacy, very important.

I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.

I started out as a Cold Warrior, even my last years in grade school.

More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.