Famous Quotes & Sayings

Samuel Beckett

There is no escape from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us. The mood is of no importance. Deformation has taken place.

Samuel Beckett

Already all confusion. Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. Despite precautions. If only she could be pure figment. Unalloyed. This old so dying woman. So dead. In the madhouse of the skull and nowhere else. Where no more precautions to be taken. No precautions possible. Cooped up there with the rest. Hovel and stones. The lot. And the eye. How simple all then. If only all could be pure figment. Neither be nor been nor by any shift to be. Gently gently. On. Careful.

Salman Rushdie

It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.

Salman Rushdie

Science fiction is where I started out, really. When I was a kid, I was a complete addict of science fiction. It was one of my earliest interests as a writer, and I've just taken a long time to circle back around to it.

Salman Rushdie

A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth, or one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth. Snap your fingers; a snapshot's faster.

Salman Rushdie

When you know what you're against you have taken the first step to discovering what you're for.

W. G. Sebald

The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it.

W. H. Auden

From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.

W. H. Auden

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

William Cobbett

The town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life.

Wayne Newton

When you take of a man's time, you've taken a part of his life.

Wayne Newton

You can take of a man's money, but when it's all said and done, you've only taken his money.

Wayne Huizenga

We're looking for something where we can make something happen: an industry where the competition is asleep, hasn't taken advantage. It's going to be hard to find another Blockbuster, but that doesn't mean you can't have three good companies growing. The point is, we're going to be busy.

Vasily Grossman

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

Van Jones

Nobody wants a nanny state, where the government is stamping out initiative and telling us what to do, but the idea that the only alternative to that is to throw the American people overboard into a global economy with no protections to cushion us from some of these blows is absurd on its face. That's why I think there's been a concerted effort to distort my message. When you hear me speak beyond the sound bites taken out of context, I think I make a lot of sense to people, even those in Red States like the one where I grew up.

Van Morrison

Some thoughts went through my head about recording some stuff that had influenced me earlier in my career like blues and early rock. But it didn't seem to really make sense at that point - it might have been taken the wrong way. A lot of people already had been into that trip.

Van Morrison

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

Upton Sinclair

Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

Tyrese Gibson

I can say, hands down, 'Annapolis' is the most challenging film I've ever taken on.

Robert Johnson

I've taken Eco drink everyday for a year and I can tell you that it works!!!! I definitely can tell when I miss a day.....

Robert Payne

Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long before they have taken to their deathbeds.

Robert Owen

To preserve permanent good health, the state of mind must be taken into consideration.

Robert Pattinson

I've never really taken myself seriously as an actor, It is surprising the amount of people who think I'm going to be really dumb. I think they think anyone who has done teen movies is just an idiot. I don't know, maybe I am. Some of the best actors, if you talk to them, they're not the smartest people in the world.

Robert Pattinson

I think someone follows me. They do the most random stuff. I get a photo taken through a burger drive-through window and it's like, 'What?'. They always seem like they're six feet away. I don't understand. I'm walking around and I don't see anybody.

Robert M. Pirsig

Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.

Robert Fitzgerald

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Vinton Cerf

The purpose behind terrorism is to instill fear in people - the fear that electrical power, for instance, will be taken away or the transportation system will be taken down.

Saul Bellow

Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

Sarah Jessica Parker

As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

Sandra Fluke

There are many types of preventive health care services that are covered, things like blood pressure medication, for example. And women are merely asking that their health be taken just as seriously.

Sandra Brown

He lifted his gaze to the framed photograph of Tanya and him taken on their wedding day. God, she had been lovely. Her smile had come through her eyes straight from her heart. He had known unequivocally that she loved him. He believed to this day that she had died knowing that he loved her. How could she not know? He had dedicated his life to never letting her doubt it.

Sandra Day O'Connor

We hold that the reckless disregard for human life implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activity known to carry a grave risk of death represents a highly culpable mental state that may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment not inevitable, lethal result.

Rose Wilder Lane

Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog.