Famous Quotes & Sayings

Elaine Stritch

Making clever speeches takes a lot of work and a lot of time.

Antonia Fraser

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

Bertrand Russell

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

Bobby Robson

We haven't paid 25 million and 10 million and all the dazzling figures you see being banded about for strikers at the moment. We've been very clever and frugal in our dealings. He's not cheap, he's not for nothing, but we're very happy with the deal.

Christopher Fowler

The queen of crime, Agatha Christie, was always more concerned about the clockwork cleverness of the plot, never the investigator.

Gary Sick

I think in fact the regime, which initially thought they had been very clever in getting him elected ... realize they've got a tiger by the tail. I don't think they're all that pleased about it.

E. F. Schumacher

The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.

George Bernard Shaw

To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it

Michael Young

Today we frankly recognize that democracy can be no more than aspiration, and have rule not so much by the people as by the cleverest people; not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.

Yang Lan

In 1994, after four years of talking about travel on my first show, I realized I knew so little about the world - I knew so little about myself. I decided to quit my job and pursue a postgraduate degree in New York.

Thom Yorke

We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked.

Ike Barinholtz

We decided we don't use the term 'fat' for me. We use the term 'juicy' for me. My wife's fine with it, but the rule is when I'm over double her weight, it's over.

Irving Paul Lazar

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and there's nothing doing, so I decide to make something happen by lunch.

Vivek Wadhwa

Writing a book is usually a full-time job that takes years. I didn't have years. So I decided to crowdsource content for the book.

E. O. Wilson

We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

Becky G

When I was 11, I decided to start rapping, playing guitar, and writing songs. Everything really blossomed from there.

Bethany Mota

I decided to launch a fragrance because Aeropostale approached me about creating one, and it's something that I kind of always wanted to do but didn't think it would actually happen. So when I heard I had the opportunity to create my own perfume, I got super excited.

Vidya Balan

Promotions can be seen in two ways - either you hate them, and they're a burden, and you are getting through with it, or you can enjoy them. I decided early on that I was going to enjoy them. I did 43 interviews in a day for 'Kahaani.'

Cecelia Ahern

Holly smiled weakly. Gerry would know exactly how she was feeling, he would know exactly what to say and he would know exactly what to do. He would give her one of his famous hugs and all her problems would melt away. She grabbed a pillow from her bed and hugged it tight. She couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone, really hugged someone. And the depressing thing was that she couldn't imagine ever embracing anyone the same way again.

Bill Hicks

That's starting to depress me about UFOs. The fact that they cross galaxies...and always end up in places like Fyfe, Alabama.

Derrick Mason

We can't keep making mistakes, we can't keep playing like this. It's demoralizing to lose, even worse to have your starting quarterback get hurt. That's depressing in itself. We're going to stick together, and get better.

B. B. King

The early years when I was starting, blues player, you wasn't always welcome in a lot of the other places. People usually have preconceived ideas about blues music. They always feel that it's depressing and that it's just something that a guy sit out on a stool, grab a guitar, and just start singing or mumbling or whatever.

Craig Kilborn

I would do that and watch him, and it's depressing 'cause he is that good,

M. Wolfe

We've been waiting a year for some sign of a turnaround in IT spending, and we haven't seen it. Any kind of reinforcement of that message tends to have a depressing effect on tech stocks.

Michel Gauthier

What is depressing is the failure to act, the indifference, and the negligence of the federal government for everything that touches our seaway,

David Alan Grier

I try to make my bed every day for mental health. Coming home to an unmade bed or a room with clothes all over will depress me.

David Sedaris

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

Anthony Bourdain

I'm never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

Steven Wright

I used to be a narrator for bad mimes.

Mario Vargas Llosa

It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

John McTiernan

In a thriller, the camera's an active narrator, or can be.

Ben Barnes

No one wants to be with a girl that your mother would pick for you.

Richard Avedon

Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

B. F. Skinner

We'll pick those off as we are able,

Bruno Cullen

We've got probably 11 forwards who can play NRL, and we're only going to pick eight.

Riley Wallace

We have to play our game. We'll pick our spots to run, but we can't run-and-gun. That's their style.

Paul Horn

Basically, I like to pick up my flute, which is a pretty instrument, and play pretty on it.

Sarah Price

(My children) need to pick up the torch and keep on moving.

DeShaun Foster

You just pick one, ... and go at him.

Mads Mikkelsen

I think I've always had to pick and choose whatever I want to work on. If I'm not happy with what I'm doing, it's probably not going to end up that interesting.

Gail Carriger

It seems to me that Halloween is the perfect time to get all over steampunk.

Mark Tacchi

That was the first time, other than the medley (relay) that we've put Libby (O'Brien) on anchor. Starting her just wasn't working. When Krissy (Brown) starts, that seems to spark her. We get more out of it all the way around with Krissy starting and Libby on anchor.

R. Robinson

I think just watching (tape of) the team we're going to play there seems to be more urgency, there's more awareness, more attitude.

Robin Wright

I think just by watching him, like, 'Let's get on with it. Let's just shoot the scene, and we're done,' which seems logical.

Randy Ready

(Johnston) has been hot. Anything he touches right now seems to work out for him.

Jimmy Baron

I was very concerned, but he seems to be fine.

Jim Smith

I tell them it's the future. It seems to be where truck tires are heading.

Travis Tucker

Yeah, it seems like that. But that's the way we like it.

Mike Sherman

He seems to understand that this is a big year for him. And I think he wants to do something about that.

Stephen Friedman

To make it more meaningful, you really have to have the right class. What makes this work is the setting of the right person in the right class.

Patrick Leahy

A victim is a victim is a victim. We should stop setting up standards that say we will have one standard of law enforcement for one group of victims but not for another.

Mikhail Gorbachev

I don't think Russia is setting this as a goal; I don't think this should be Russia's goal. I think even the United States doesn't need to be a superpower. China doesn't need to be a superpower. It's a different world.

Paul Brinkley

We are not setting up a new bureaucracy.

David Leslie

I don't think it's so much of a disadvantage setting up from scratch.

Ariel Sharon

I have begun, with my colleagues, setting up a new party,

Gilbert Arenas

I'd been setting up my team all night, ... I'm going to win the game. That's what I do. . . . They didn't say it was going to be easy.

Kevin Henkes

When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.

Sam Aiona

There are various interpretations of the new law. It is setting us back.

David S. Goyer

What I really like to do is write 'genre' stories without a cartoonish element. I did the same with 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and I'll do the same with 'Man of Steel.'

C. S. Lewis

History is a story written by the finger of God.

Cecelia Ahern

They say a story loses something with each telling.

Cecelia Ahern

Every single ordinary person has an extraordinary story.

Bill Bryson

I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

Patricia Polacco

My stories deal with multicultural situations as well as multigenerational settings.

William Shakespeare

A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story

Baz Luhrmann

All good, clean stories are melodrama; it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

Kim Edwards

William Trevor is an author I admire; his stories are subtle and powerful, and beautifully written.

Bill Hicks

The Voice of Reason is in us all...and everyone can recognize it because it makes sense and everyone benefits from it equally.

William Shakespeare

Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft.

Paul Lieberstein

I feel it's very important to let individual writers' voices come through. But the character has to be consistent.

John Nash

I thought of the voices as... something a little different from aliens. I thought of them more like angels... It's really my subconscious talking, it was really that... I know that now.

Hank Azaria

I have no new voices - they've all been used.

William Shakespeare

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, The numbers of the feared.

William Shakespeare

I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

Mike Judge

I think I do too many voices in these shows. I think it's because we have trouble getting voice talent.

Chris Isaak

He was really cool, ... We really connected. His voice just aches.