A Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

Dinaw Mengestu

Quote Topics

Better Columbia Course Critic Did Fiction Great Great Thing How Learning Me My Time Nothing Now Part Permanent Program Reader Really Remains Taught Thing Time Work Wrote

Quote Author

Dinaw Mengestu
Ethiopian - Novelist
Born: 1978

I wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. That's how I've figured it out.

Elliott Colla

I did go to an MFA program, at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. For me, it worked perfectly. It was a small program. They only take five fiction writers a year, and they fund all of us - you don't go into debt to get an MFA. It's not like getting an MBA - you're not going to buy yourself out.

Anthony Doerr

I had a chance to work with Cain Velasquez, Mike Kyle and this was great. And I remember how Bob Cook all the time he did conditioning, yell all the time, 'You have to do better.' He pushed me all the time so I really appreciate him. It was a great experience for me.

Andrei Arlovski

My parents, they gave me everything. They taught me how to work hard. They taught me how to be a good Catholic. They taught me how to love people, how to respect people, but how to stand my ground, as well.

Joanna Jedrzejczyk

The biggest thing is to give it back. You want to leave the game in a better situation than you came in with it. That's really important to me, especially being an avid reader and just learning about how to build businesses, learning how to make the most of the business you're in, the ins and outs of the relationships that you build as well.

Andre Iguodala

There are many other writers whose work I admire tremendously, but none whose work struck me at just the right young age. Jack Vance taught me that speculative fiction, science fiction, could be wonderfully and liberatingly stylistic. It didn't have to be pulp stuff. He really changed my writing and my view of science fiction, so if nothing else, my little homage to him in the novelette I wrote for that anthology is my thank-you to him. He helped me see that any genre can have excellent writing in it.

Dan Simmons

We think of the Marine Corps as a military outfit, and of course it is, but for me, the U.S. Marine Corps was a four-year crash course in character education. It taught me how to make a bed, how to do laundry, how to wake up early, how to manage my finances. These are things my community didn't teach me.

J. D. Vance

Much better than it has been all week. I got sick again this week, so I wasn't really able to breathe. I was on antibiotics (until Wednesday). This program was so great coming here. I felt more confident than I ever have all season, more calm, more relaxed, bending the knees. So even that program with the one mistake ... you can't be perfect all the time, but for me that was a great skate for me and I'm happy with how it went.

Gabrielle Daleman

Bochy is my guy. He raised me in the game; I was 20-years-old and as green as any grapes as you've ever seen on a vine. He took care of me, taught me how to be a professional, and taught me how to get my work done.

Jake Peavy

From a very young age, my parents taught me the most important lesson of my whole life: They taught me how to listen. They taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge - and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.

Steven Spielberg

Here's the thing that I think really pushed me, was my versatility. Because when I came in to the movie business, all the stunt men were specialists. If you did horse work, that's all you did. If you did cars and motorcycles, you did that. But when I came in, I taught myself how to do everything.

Hal Needham

I loved my soap days. I really loved them. A Martinez and Marcy Walker taught me how to act, basically. All those people pulled together and helped get me started. Like, showed me how to hit my mark, made me do this, made me do that. That was my first long-running professional gig. And it was like, they were just - great, great with me.

Ally Walker

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to doI don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.