Were Quotes

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow?

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

I was a camp counselor for kids whose moms were on welfare, unfortunately, and right across the camp was the best, most pristine and preppy camp in the universe.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

The banks are not lending, at least from what I see. They were so wild and reckless back in the good times that they got burned terribly.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '£10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest, educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

There was one occasion when I was very young - eight years or seven years old - that Jewish businessmen went through the forest, and they were assassinated. And that was for the first time I saw in our paper where there were assassinations in our place.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.

We are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.

For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

Self-esteem comes from who you have in your life. How you were raised. What you struggled with as a child.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.

There's a lot about the character. It doesn't always happen, but there are some characters you really create a relationship with, almost as if they were your friend. And you never get into their heads again or think like them.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

God created the world; the laws of nature were created by God. True science tries to find out what God put in the world. The trouble is where scientists speculate about theology and they don't know what they're talking about because they weren't there. They can't speculate about the origins of life because they weren't there.

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

Not only was it nearly impossible to hear because of these huge rubber ears we had to wear, but we also had these huge furry hands which were absolutely useless, especially if you had to scratch yourself.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.

My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.

The founding fathers were not only brilliant, they were system builders and systematic thinkers. They came up with comprehensive plans and visions.