#the

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#essays #exception #i #interesting #me

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#enjoy #i #i do #most #much

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#aside #begin #complete #desk #drawer

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. ↗

— Barack Obama

#been #come #ones #other #person

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential. ↗

— Barack Obama

#ambition #cars #clear #clothes #drive

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt. ↗

— Barack Obama

#better #debate #debt #debt limit #deserve

My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead. ↗

— Barack Obama

#came #christ #christian #christian faith #church

It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. ↗

— Barack Obama

#bitter #cling #explain #frustrations #get

So long as I'm Commander-in-Chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known. When you take off the uniform, we will serve you as well as you've served us - because no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they need when they come home. ↗

— Barack Obama

#care #come #commander-in-chief #country #ever

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending "don't ask, don't tell," making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples. ↗

— Barack Obama

#been #benefits #couples #done #each