Often Quotes

Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.

One is often guilty by being too just.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

I think we present extreme aspects of human behavior and hopefully get at times, messages across or bring issues to the table or as we so often say, shed light into the dark crevices of human nature.

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

There's an expression in Australia that's called 'Go Bush,' which means to get out of the city and relax. I try and 'go bush' to places where there's no cell reception. But, I don't get to do that often, so for the most part, it's just a state of mind.

It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn't even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.

Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.

For me, there is a stigma attached to playing beautiful parts. They are often empty characters whom the action happens around. I'm more drawn to characters with a complex internal life, who have a burning frustration underneath that keeps them going.

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

The problems come when your personal life and relationships come under scrutiny in the press and often very uncomplimentary things are printed about you.

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting - only woman at the table - and I'd think, 'OK well, I don't think I'll say that. It may sound stupid.' And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it's completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.

Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

I didn't know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn't believe it - we must change them 10 times a day - each. So that's 20 diapers a piece a day.

Most actors really love it, that's what they want to do. They burn to do it. And so they'll read a script and think, that's an interesting part. And because they love acting, that blinds them to the fact that the rest of it is pretentious nonsense, which it very often is.

I often close my eyes because I can't tolerate violence.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?