A Quote by John D'Agata

As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.

John D'Agata

Quote Topics

Back Bus Either Essay Felt Fiction Writer Go Going Hoping Jump Kind Like Linger Me Mode Nonfiction Only Options Other Personal Show Some Station Student Take Take Me Time Transportation Unknown Up Wanted Were Writer

Quote Author

John D'Agata
American - Writer
Born: 1975

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.

John D'Agata

When we look at transportation in America, there's going to be companies like Magic Bus, where you have these private bus fleets. You're going to have carpooling; you're going to have these different types of transportation. It's going to be a full ecosystem, but it's not going to be a winner-takes-all.

Troy Carter

When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.

Jim Dale

I felt that there could be some anger. There could be some frustration that he has the tendency to take over the room, but I wanted all of those things to show in the grays of her hair and the fact that her hips are much wider than they probably were when she met him. I wanted it to show in the fact that her hair is not done up all the time. I wanted it to be a part of that every day that wasn't in your face. Because then for me, that's overacting. To me, that's not "being." I wanted Rose [in "Fences"] to be many things.

Viola Davis

If something happens and you're behind, and you get hit in the mouth early like that, you have two options: You can either pack it in mentally and internally and go into survival mode and quit, or you're going to get up and go to work.

Andre Ward

I'm not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I'm also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.

John D'Agata

For a while I just couldn't imagine that there was a place for me in nonfiction. I looked around at what we were calling nonfiction and I thought, "Maybe you do have to go to poetry in order to do this other weird thing in nonfiction."

John D'Agata

There's so many modern films where the fans take one side or the other. I'm hoping this isn't going to be like that; I'm hoping it isn't that kind of film at all. What I would love for the audience to take from it is to understand why she was so stuck in the middle and confused.

Saoirse Ronan

Even reading my first bad review was an awesome experience. It was cool because you make something and not everybody's going to like it. I felt like that kind of grew me up a little bit into a professional. I was a student filmmaker, and no one writes reviews about student films.

Ryan Coogler

I would go to work on the show and I felt awful every day, that's not the way it was. ... I felt like some kind of prostitute or something. If I feel so bad, why keep on showing up to this place? I'm going to Africa. The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching.

Dave Chappelle

I go back to things all the time. It's really nice, too, like when I'm going through some kind of a writer's block, and I'm feeling uninspired, I go to some of my oldest songs from over the years and sift through them, and one thing that's very nice is to see how I've grown up a little bit. A little bit.

Sharon Van Etten

I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."

Wayne Coyne

I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. 'Stargate Universe,' they were kind of secretive too a little bit about what they wanted to do, but I kind of liked working this way. I like the surprises, and I like knowing just enough to work on the character.

Ming-Na Wen

When you go on your phone to check what time it is, you get so distracted. It happens to me every day. 'Oh, I just wanted to see what time it is, but now I'm magically on a panda video.' This is the easier way, but it's also a part of your personal style. It ends up becoming a part of who you are, and representing what you love.

Yara Shahidi

Some days felt longer than other days. Some days felt like two whole days. Unfortunately those days were never weekend days. Our Saturdays and Sundays passed in half the time of a normal workday. In other words, some weeks it felt like we worked ten straight days and had only one day off.