#sing

Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work to the attention of many potential readers who might otherwise have been totally unaware of them. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#awards #been #bringing #competitive #deserving

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#my time #probably #revising #spend #time

I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by. Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that. ↗

— Barack Obama

#central park #day #folks #go #i

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#ask #disingenuous #filled #history #seems

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential. ↗

— Barack Obama

#asks #because #buck #certain #focusing

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

We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn't do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell. ↗

— Barack Obama

#built #chasing #come #could #country

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

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction. ↗

— Barack Obama

#compass #deadly #direction #engaged #exercising

And so our goal on health care is, if we can get, instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year, it's going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we've made huge progress. And by the way, that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That's why we did it. ↗

— Barack Obama

#care #care costs #costs #could #deficit