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It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

David Antin

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David Antin
Art Critic
Performance Artist
Poet
Writer
the United States of America
David Abraham Antin
David Abram Antin
Hostage
Mouth
Mouths
Novel
Somebody
Else
Character
Hard

More quotes by David Antin

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My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.
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For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
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I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.
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I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.
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I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.
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I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
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The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
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There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.
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When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
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Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
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My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldnt understand why I wanted to be an engineer she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
David Antin
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From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.
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I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
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I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
David Antin
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While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.
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My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.
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While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.
David Antin
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I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
David Antin
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I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
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You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.
David Antin