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"There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way."
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"America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand."

"America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there."

"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."

"If you take any populated place - any major city in America - and drive 45 minutes from that spot directly out of town you'll be in about as country a place as you'll ever find."

"They take pride in their schools. They begin to participate, where, when they are renters, they don't do that. So what we're doing by this program is strengthening America."
Explore more quotes by Carlisle Floyd

"When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is."

"If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it."

"There's the Bacon society, which is fostered by his fourth wife Helen Bacon, but I don't know what kind of performances his music gets. He wrote symphonic music and some chorale music."

"The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons."

"Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations."

"I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable."

"People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses."

"I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater."
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