Margo Jefferson Quotes

Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.

Translated poetry filled the no-man's-land between my own work and other writers', and I found this fascinating to explore.

Writers such as Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace have shown the path to a newer generation of writers for whom all national boundaries are quaint curiosities.

I have learned to create from a hybridized point of view. It's an asset - something rather liberating.

You go to Africa, and you see how things are over there. Spiritually, it opens you up.

Travelling, in general, opens your mind to so many different cultures and different ways of thinking and different ways of seeing stuff. I definitely feel like it has an influence on my music to be a bit more broader and a bit more open.

I think it's good that you test the reality that surrounds you in your neighbourhood with the reality as it is in other parts of the world; you come up with a better judgment. I'm not meaning that literally you can only do that and not go to school at all but in terms of enrichment of a personality I think it's a fabulous thing.

The primary difference that I have found between the system of education in India and other countries, particularly the U.S., is that they focus on problem solving and relating theories to reality around them. These two things are lacking in the education system in India.

My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books, what's the purpose of reading, and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own.

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India.

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

The people were just so lovely and accommodating and had really interesting questions and it was just interesting to see how the show is actually received in so many different countries.

One of my greatest times of inspiration is when I'm traveling or living in a new country - there's a tremendous freedom that comes from being unfettered by your own, familiar culture, and by seeing the world from a different point of view.

The dance world is too small in lots of ways - it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.

Education is neither eastern nor western.

He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.

Since its beginnings, American writing has been in dialogue with other literatures.

As an actor, you come in contact with so many different people and cultures. It makes you a more accepting person.

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.