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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.

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
World
Entertainers
Greece
Debate
Entertainment
Sophists
Pieces
Debates
Century
Entertainer
Public
Socrates
Talk
Paradoxical

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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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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'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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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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I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
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It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.
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An art machine is a system whose parts when put in motion act upon each other in such a way as to cause you to see things differently
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When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.
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I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
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Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
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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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My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.
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I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
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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.
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Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.
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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.
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