A Quote by Alexander Chee

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA. — © Alexander Chee
Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.
I find I'm waking up really early now, just to read. Waking up at ungodly hours. But I try to keep up, religiously. When I was a kid, it used to be a book a day. Then a book a week. Now it's like a book every two weeks. But I read every day.
When I think back to my influences and icons musically, they were my icons musically because, for example, I would look at Rakim and be like man he said the freshest things and then I look at him and he would have on the pair of Nikes that I wanted and I'm like, "ma' please!" It was everything. Now, I sort of feel like if you are fresh then your music doesn't have to be that good because people are so keyed into the fashion. That's just the times I guess.
It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.
I try to find some sort of meditative hobby to do on set, and it's different for every film. There's a lot of downtime, but I don't like reading on set because it feels like you're taking yourself out of your world, instead of being present. And then, you feel like you're not ready to do whatever you have to do.
Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
I was a painter, then a novelist, then a journalist, then a screenwriter, and now I'm a director, and it feels all part of the same continuum. One led to the other, and it just feels like the natural confluence of all the ways of storytelling that I've been doing for almost 30 years.
When you're in [ Bahamas], it feels like a bunch of islands, with keys and things like that. It's an existential archipelago. It's funny, you try to escape who you are and where you're from, but it's always part of your social DNA.
We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.
When you read a great book at one point in your life then in another part of your life, when you read the same book, it's like it was just written because now what you bring to the experience is so much richer.
I believe there's a platonic ideal for every book that is written, like there's the perfect version of the book somewhere in the ether, and my job is to find what that book is through my editing.
Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy.
What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book - a key part of our planet's cultural legacy.
Every now and then you might have to change things around. It's not something that is good to do a lot - especially with your batting - but every now and then, I don't think it's a bad thing.
Every now and then I'll read a book, I'll be so proud of myself, I'll try and squeeze it into conversation. People will be like, "Hey Jim, how ya do-" "I read a book! Two hundred and fifty pages!" "That's great, what was it about?" "No idea! Took me three years!"
I love doing a television show. It just always feels like it's a little while before you find something that feels unique and that feels like a character that you really want to play for awhile.
You've got to shake your fists at lightning now, you've got to roar like forest fire You've got to spread your light like blazes all across the sky They're going to aim the hoses on you, show 'em you won't expire Not till you burn up every passion, not even when you die Come on now, you've got to try, if you're feeling contempt, well then you tell it If you're tired of the silent night, Jesus, well then you yell it Condemned to wires and hammers, strike every chord that you feel That broken trees and elephant ivories conceal
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