Unsourced Quotes
65 quotes
"I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter."
"I hate the way he writes. I kind of love the way he lives, though."
"I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness."
"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini."
"I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast."
"I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."
"It's like living in a house where everything's painted red."
"Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze."
"Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over New York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says,'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'"
"Well, that I'm not playing better."
"Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught."
"You're beginning to sound like a cross between David Frost and David Susskind, and that is a cross I cannot bear."
"Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none."
"Perhaps the Russians have done the right thing, after all, in abolishing copyright. It is well known that conscious and unconscious appropriation, borrowing, adapting, plagiarizing, and plain stealing are variously, and always have been, part and parcel of the process of artistic creation. The attempt to make sense out of copyright reaches its limit in folk song. For here is the illustration par excellence of the law of Plagiarism. The folk song is, by definition and, as far as we can tell, by reality, entirely a product of plagiarism."
"Roughneck and rudeness, We should be using, On the ones who practice wicked charms, For the sword and the stone, Bad to the bone, Battle’s not over, Even when it's won, And when a child is born into this world, It has no concept, Of the tone the skin is living in."
"Tenacity, Dick — stay with the bastard till he's on the bottom."
"I think I am a goner. If I die, I die a true American; and what grieves me most is, thinking that I've been murdered by a set of Irish - by Morrissey in particular."
"When you have an idea, hang on to it. It's the most valuable thing in the world. Nurture it. Test it. And remember: you can grow a toadstool overnight, but it takes time to grow an oak."
"I was engaged in what I believe to be the most thrilling industry in the world — aviation. My heart still leaps when I see a tiny two-seater plane soaring gracefully through the sky. Our great airlines awe me. Yet I know they were not produced in a day or a decade."
"It may take years to put your idea into action. But if it has real worth, time will prove it, and you will have something that will endure."
"Gee, I thought we'd be a lot higher at MECO!"
"Race does not need to be the natural dividing line on important national issues because many indigenous people and organisations have opposed the Bill. We can learn from this debate that race is an artificial barrier in our community, and that sometimes, it is little more than a safe harbour for politicians who should know better."
"They defend Sarajevo."
"They are very dangerous, but we exterminate them like rats."
"I know how to say Allah, and that's it. I'm a citizen of Sarajevo and a Bosnian and full stop."
"(in the build-up to the France-Portugal semi final at the 2006 World Cup) "This is the BBC and we will be completely impartial, so allez les bleus. With me tonight holding their lucky coqs sportifs under the desk are...""
"The best place to watch Wimbledon F.C. is teletext. As you can tell, I dislike Wimbledon. Hate them, even."
"A great challenge lies ahead in the modeling and verification of systems that are subject to timing constraints."
"Almost all computer systems of the future will utilize real-time scientific principles and technology."
"I paint ideas, not things. My intention is less to paint works that are pleasing to the eye than to suggest great thoughts which will speak to the imagination and the heart and will arouse all that is noblest and best in man."
"In the best painting as in authentic poetry one is aware of moral pressures exerted... choices are important, moral pressure exists to make right and wrong choices."
"There is a strong and conscious relationship between my work and nature which finally manifests itself in an impersonal expression."
"A journalist has a right... ...and a duty, to destroy the golden calves he helps create."
"You are permanent, but this life is not," Mr. Whittier would say. "You don't expect to visit an amusement park, then stay forever."
"The earth, he'd say, is just a big machine. A big processing plant. A factory. That's your big answer. The big truth. Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it goes round. We're the rocks. And what happens to us--the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse--why, that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright."
"We do not know what life is, and yet we manipulate it as if it were an inorganic salt solution..."
"Unangenehme Seher werden meistens als Narren abgeschrieben [Visionaries of uncomfortable truths are mostly dismissed as fools]"
"Don't fight for peace. Peace will come naturally."
"The country that surrenders will have its freedom."
"If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them."
"Money is like manure, it should be spread around."
"You can be sure that all and each one of us who have institutional responsibilities will raise not only our voice but will take concrete action against any sign of anti-Semitism. We are not willing to give away what has been a historic tradition in Latin America."
"The present time Latin America is going through, with its impressive natural and human resources, devoid of racial and religious conflicts, is a unique moment, and I believe that Argentina and Argentines are at the doorstep of an unprecedented opportunity."
"Optics is an example of the different ways a human is able to see things in the world. The same goes for the color of a person's skin and even though optics present that there are differences in color, these do not state that they should necessarily be treated as different."
"Do I have to get naked people for you to remember my name? It's Lynn from Snot."
"I'm addicted. Period. Y'know, I mean like... And it's weird because so many of the population, so much of the population is addicted and err... Y'know, compulsive and impulsive... I'm really like... compulsive about shit... When I can't fix my head with... y'know, with a certain drug or whatever, I'll clean something up, y'know, or I'll, I get really like... fucking fidgety and uncomfortable and I get... I fly off the handle easy, y'know, and it's like... if it's not... if I'm not gorging myself on-, on-, on one thing, I'm fucking... I'm trying to fill that... that hole some other way, y'know what I mean? It's always this great feeling of need and it doesn't ne-, necessarily have to be of anything in particular, it's just something that you don't know what it is which drives you that much more insane sometimes... y'know, and that's what a lot of people today, uhm, suffer from, and a lot of people don't even realise it, y'know. I don't profess to know everything about it but, y'know... I don't know... I just, uh, know that there's that hole that needs to be filled and, uh, a lot of people die trying."
"I never would have thought being high in a zoo would lead to that."
"Everything I did on that show was me screwing around in the hallways, running around looking for attention. Joe Pesci, I never said 'Oh, I wanna do the Joe Pesci Show.' It was me, sitting around, bored out of my mind, and just walking the hallways going [Joe Pesci voice] 'Where do you get your culios big enough to call me...wait, I'm not gonna answer ya! S'ya worryin' about your weight, ya fat bastard, otherwise you wouldn't have problems upstairs doin' ya wife!' And this stoner guy, who was an intern, said 'Hey man, you should do that on [Weekend] Update!' He said, 'Well, "Casino's" coming out, and you should go on as Pesci and have Norm [MacDonald] say he's never heard of it.' Originally, it was me and the stoner intern, and I'd go on and Norm MacDonald's [Norm MacDonald voice] 'Hey, here to see, tell you how to do a movie, is Joe Pesci over here!' And I'd come on, [Joe Pesci voice] 'Hey, blah blah blah blah!' And he goes 'Well, I've never heard of it,' and I knock the crap out of him. And then some writer was like 'Wait wait wait, what are you doing? Hey, I've got an idea for it.' And then we went in..."
"The goat thing, I went out, I was drinking some beers with the writers - writers I couldn't stand, and they didn't like me either. They were all like Harvard, Yale, and [imperious voice] 'We've been studying comedy for seven years, and...we've never been on stage, but we know comedy! Bwahahaha!' So I said 'Listen, I know this is a little out there, but what about a guy...who has Tourette's of a goat?' And these guys just stare at me like 'Man, Breuer's HIGH out of his MIND!' I said 'The more he drinks, the more he starts eating the curtains, and he gets nuts and sings karaoke at the end of the night.' And then about two weeks later, this guy came back, he's like, 'Hey, I've got an idea for that weird goat thing you were talking about.' He said 'What if he only sings 80's?' And I thought that was the DUMBEST...thing I've ever heard in my life! And then, we tried it, and now I've got people drunk out of their minds in a bar trying to 'baa' at me. [drunken voice] 'Hey, man! Yo, yo man, it's the sheep dude right here! [drunken 'baa'ing] I shouldn'ta had that hot dog, man!' Just hammered, baaing at me in the street."
"Little droplets of poetic essence."
Showing 50 of 65 quotes