A Quote by Kent Haruf

This country's crazy in terms of fame and what people think it means. They expect a writer to be something between a Hollywood starlet and the village idiot. — © Kent Haruf
This country's crazy in terms of fame and what people think it means. They expect a writer to be something between a Hollywood starlet and the village idiot.
I think the possibilities are endless in terms of what the genre would be like. However, in terms of looking for sources of money, I think we have to be very careful not to fall into Hollywood's commodification of Chicano culture. We could look at the example of Piri Thomas, a successful Puerto Rican writer now living in the Bay Area, who has received repeated offers from Hollywood...and he said he's not going to write about his people doing drugs and going to jail.
You can't expect to be the same person you were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that... the music too.
You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.
I don't think anything could prepare you for whatever fame is. Fame is a very hard word to define cause it means different things to different people for different reasons so I never really think of it as fame, I think of it as part of the job.
I'm an artist living in a small, Scottish village. So one would expect to be treated with some sort of caution. And the village and the farmers have shown enormous tolerance of me and interest in what I do. I mean, they don't necessarily understand what I'm doing all the time. But they, you know, I think they respect what I do and that there is a connection between what they do with the land and what I do, you know, that we're both dependent on weather and respond to that.
Instead of wanting to win, we expected to win. There's a lifetime between wanting something and expecting something. When you expect something, it means you've prepared, done the work, and EXPECT TO WIN!!
Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.
To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.
I don't expect to ever put my family background to rest but I do expect to be taken seriously as a scholar, a writer and a Latin Americanist on my own terms, not defined through my parents and their history or politics.
I don't consider myself a starlet or a Hollywood person.
I think too many people in Hollywood perhaps fail to make a distinction between the political side of Israel and the notion of the country. And they can be separate things.
I'm told there's a saying from those ancient times, kalos kai agathos, when someone or something is good and beautiful on the outside, but is also good and noble on the inside in terms of character and in terms of purpose. And I think that's a fine description of the friendship that exists between the Greek people and the American people.
I've actually seen guys who I considered relatively stupid college coaches, then go to the NFL, and sanctimoniously think they understand that something the rest of us couldn't perceive. They're an idiot before, they're an idiot now, and they'll be an idiot afterwords. It's mind-numbing.
I try to remind people, whether you have a growth manager or a value manager, you're going to go through cycles where you think you have a village idiot.
I'm already crazy. I'm a fearless person. I think it creeps up on you. I don't think it can be stopped. If my destiny is to lose my mind because of fame, then that's my destiny. But my passion still means more than anything.
Every old Hollywood starlet would sing in movies, there'd always be some big dance sequence. Think of Marilyn Monroe singing 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.'
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