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If the sad truth be known, writers, being the misfits we are, probably ought not to belong to families in the first place. We simply are too self-interested, though we may excuse the flaw by calling it 'focused.'

Roger Rosenblatt

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Roger Rosenblatt
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Journalist
First
Probably
Families
Though
Excuse
Known
Focused
Place
Calling
Truth
Writers
Misfits
May
Interested
Flaw
Firsts
Ought
Flaws
Self
Simply
Belong

More quotes by Roger Rosenblatt

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Remote control. Ingenious contradiction of terms. Fits like a handshake. Aims like a gun.
Roger Rosenblatt
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If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.
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Whatever you think matters - doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life.
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If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something.
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What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.
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The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.
Roger Rosenblatt
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If a man spends enough time in a library, he may actually change his mind. I have seen it happen.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved
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A five-year old is in a pretty good position to assess who is beautiful and who is not. Removed from the confusions of sexuality, he or she can judge a face as a face.
Roger Rosenblatt
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The problem with death is absence
Roger Rosenblatt
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Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: 'Your life counts for something.' In no other subject that I know of is that message given.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.
Roger Rosenblatt
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The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.
Roger Rosenblatt
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The trick in foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps. The only way to be sure is to rub each clump between your thumb and index finger, which makes a mess of your hands.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death--that is, they attempt suicide--twice as often as men, though men are more successful because they use surer weapons, like guns.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die and decrease the surplus population. Scrooge may not have had God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.
Roger Rosenblatt
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Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.
Roger Rosenblatt