A Quote by Amitava Kumar
I was pretty aimless as a youth, especially in Patna. I think reading saved me.
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If I was to ask you tonight if you were saved? Do you say 'Yes, I am saved'. When? 'Oh so and so preached, I got baptized and...' Are you saved? What are you saved from, hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad manners? Are you saved from rebellion against your parents? Come on, what are you saved from?
In the early 1990s, my relatives in Patna, even those who had no interest in reading or writing, wanted Parker fountain pens.
Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well.
While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.
I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.
I think it's very pretty. Can it be pretty if no one thinks it's pretty? I think it's pretty. If you're the only one? That's pretty pretty. And what about the boys? Don't you want them to think you're pretty? I wouldn't want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty.
I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.
Work saved me. Literature saved me. It sounds corny but it's absolutely true. I was going in the wrong direction, but after the 9,000th night at the bar doing dope with a bunch of Dead Heads, I began to think there was something more.
I think what saved me is me being honest. I think I somewhow had the courage to do something and say something that I knew would possibly end my career. Instead of making business more important I made my soul and my life more important. And I think by being truthful, and being honest, that saved me.
Being truly aimless is like being dead. It may even be the same thing, or worse. It is the aimless who find the wrong roads, and drive down them, simply because they have nowhere else to go.
I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.
People see rock and roll as, as youth culture, and when youth culture becomes monopolised by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you, do you have any idea?
I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture.
I like to speak with the youth, and I like to hear the youth. They always put me in difficulty. They tell me things that I haven't thought of, or that I've partly thought of. The restless youth, the creative youth, I like them!
As a twelve-year-old girl, I thought that I was only pretty if the people on social media told me that I was pretty - and they weren't telling me I was pretty. So I didn't think I was pretty, and I was really down on myself, and I really was sad with myself. But social media doesn't give you validation or make you pretty. You make you pretty.
And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.
I was always far more into anything creative that called for a bit of active participation, like reading aloud in class. Then, having left school shortly after my GCSEs, I auditioned for the National Youth Theatre of Wales and the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain as well as the Welsh National Youth Opera. I ended up getting into all three.
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