Were Quotes

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.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

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.

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.

When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that.

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn't even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

Very ugly things were said about me.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.

My mom and I have always been really close. She's always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn't have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always.

I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately.