Latest David Plotz Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I know I would have learned a huge amount had I read the bible with my rabbi. But I also would have missed a huge amount, and I would have been guided down the narrow paths where the rabbi led me, not the paths that I chose for myself.

  David Plotz

  Path, Rabbi, Huge

  "Slate: David Plotz Discusses 'Good Book' and What He Learned Blogging the Bible". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. March 4, 2009.

• The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).

  David Plotz

  Book, Reading, Character

  "Biblically Speaking". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• I seem to have three categories of readers. The first is nonbelievers who are glad that I am reading the Bible so they don't have to bother. The second group, which is quite large, is very Biblically literate Jews. And the third, which is also very large, is Christians, most of them evangelical. The evangelical readers and the Jewish readers have generally been very encouraging, because they appreciate someone taking the book they love so seriously, and actually reading it and grappling with it.

  David Plotz

  Christian, Book, Reading

  "Biblically Speaking". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• Perhaps the most remarkable thing I found about the Bible was how flexible it is. Here we have a book written 3,000 years ago, with bizarre stories, peculiar laws, erratic deity, and yet we are able - through argument, selective reading, and desire - to find a powerful framework of laws and moral reasoning that have built a very successful society. So this Bible, for all its oddities and flaws, serves us beautifully after all these years.

  David Plotz

  Powerful, Book, Reading

  "Biblically Speaking". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• God is erratic, sometimes vindictive, sometimes merciful. The people I was taught were heroes - Jacob or Moses or David - were ambivalent figures, or worse. But that messiness was joyful, and challenging. I loved having a Bible that I could argue with.

  David Plotz

  Hero, People, Challenges

  "Biblically Speaking". Online chat, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• When you have spent too much time with something, you may lose sight of what's marvelous about it.

  David Plotz

  Sight, May, Too Much

  "Biblically Speaking". Online chat, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• The Christians think I am making a mistake by not trying the New Testament and meeting Jesus. The Jews tend to think I am making a mistake by reading without support from educated people. After all, there is 2,000 years of scholarship about the book, they say, so it's perverse of me to ignore it.

  David Plotz

  Christian, Jesus, Mistake

  "Biblically Speaking". Online chat, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• You live in a society that is shaped in every possible way by the Bible. The language you use, the laws you obey (and disobey), the founding principles of your nation, the disputes about abortion, homosexuality, adultery - these and so much else in your world are rooted in the Bible. You don't have to read it for its truth value. You should read it to understand how your world got the way it is, the way you would read the constitution or Shakespeare.

  David Plotz

  Law, Abortion, Use

  "Biblically Speaking". Online chat, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

• I wasn't reading it [the Bible] as literature. I was reading it as literature, and as history, and as a moral guide, and as anthropology and law and culture.

  David Plotz

  Reading, Law, Literature

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• One problem with how we think about the Bible is that people tend to jam it into narrower categories, when in fact it is many things all at once.

  David Plotz

  Thinking, People, Jam

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I do think students in public school (and private) should be required to study the Bible. [...] As a matter of pure education, it's shocking that we [the americans] are not compelled to learn the book, which is the source of our language, our common stories, our political structure, our conflicts.

  David Plotz

  Book, School, Thinking

  "Slate: David Plotz Discusses 'Good Book' and What He Learned Blogging the Bible". Live Chat, www.washingtonpost.com. March 4, 2009.

• My mother is somebody who I think of as having just an intense close focus. She's somebody who really can pay very, very close attention to the thing she's focusing on for a very long period of time, and that has served her incredibly well in her professional career. She knows - the things she knows, she knows them just so deeply.

  David Plotz

  Mother, Thinking, Careers

  "How Does a Host of Working Work?". "Working" with Adam Davidson, www.slate.com. May 18, 2015.

• My mother - both my mother and father had very successful careers. My mother's an English professor and my father is a scientist and physician. They worked at the same jobs for their entire life, 50 years each.

  David Plotz

  Mother, Jobs, Father

  "How Does a Host of Working Work?". "Working" with Adam Davidson, www.slate.com. May 18, 2015.

• Having good relations with lots of lots of different people helps a lot.

  David Plotz

  People, Different, Helping

  Source: www.slate.com

• I do think there will be winners and losers in the 21st century economy.

  David Plotz

  Thinking, Loser, Winner

  Source: www.slate.com

• I'm going to have a project-based life rather than a job-based life.

  David Plotz

  Jobs, Projects

  Source: www.slate.com

• On one project I was hanging out with Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carrel, and Christian Bale, and trying to explain economics to them for a movie I'm an advisor on.

  David Plotz

  Christian, Trying, Economics

  Source: www.slate.com

• I feel like there's lot of people who know finance and economics better than I do. There are lots of people who are better storytellers than I am. But the space that I occupy of storytelling about finance and economics is - more people want it than can do it.

  David Plotz

  Space, People, Want

  Source: www.slate.com

• I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that.

  David Plotz

  Thinking, Circles, Wings

  Source: www.slate.com

• I'm very lucky to be able to work in print and radio. I'm very lucky to be able to work at a time when finance and economics are really important. And the number of people who tell finance and economic stories in a kind of accessible storytelling way, there's much more demand than there is supply.

  David Plotz

  Numbers, People, Important

  Source: www.slate.com

• I'm so grateful to Hugo Lindgren, Jon Kelly, and the people who gave me the opportunity to write a weekly column. It's an amazing thing to do, and when I started they both said, you know, the problem with columns is they just exist forever.

  David Plotz

  Grateful, Writing, Opportunity

  Source: www.slate.com

• I made one choice, for example, which is I'm just going to confine work to working hours. I'm not going to work on the weekend. I'm not going to be working while I'm with my son in the morning and in the evening.

  David Plotz

  Morning, Son, Weekend

  Source: www.slate.com

• I want to have enough space to, I don't know, think thoughts. I mean, I just - I don't know that I'm capable of having an exciting, profound thought every week that's worth a column.

  David Plotz

  Mean, Thinking, Space

  Source: www.slate.com

• Here was a period where I was particularly attacked, and in untrue ways, some people online said some things that were not true about me - but it was very hurtful. And there was like, a period of time that it was very panicky, I was very upset. And my son at the time was, I guess seven, eight months old, and I would wake up early with him and let my wife sleep.

  David Plotz

  Sleep, Son, Up Early

  Source: www.slate.com

• When you're writing for the New York Times someone reading it knows the topic better than you do and knows when you've messed up.

  David Plotz

  New York, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.slate.com