Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things.
We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.
I personally can barely remember what I was like before I came to college, what made me happy or worried or confident. I don't remember what I expected in my future, except that 'President of the United States' was about halfway up the ladder.
I'm not particularly interested in painting, per se. I'm interested in a painting that has that mysterious life to it. Anything that doesn't partake of that magic is halfway dead - it returns to its physical elements, it's just paint and canvas.
Walt Disney had always tried to get more dimension in his animation and when I saw these tapes, I thought, This is it! This is what Walt was waiting for! But when I looked around, nobody at the studio at the time was even halfway interested in it.
My first Ramones show was at a small club in Columbus, Ohio, in 1978. It was a transformative experience, even though my memories are a little blurry, since someone kicked me in the head halfway through the show, probably during 'Beat on the Brat.'
Early on, it was real tough for me to stick to my guns and say 'I'm retired, I'm not rapping, don't ask me for nothing.' But I had to do that because I love rapping and I love music, so if I don't do that, you can't be halfway in it and halfway out.
A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'
In 1999, I had my back against the wall, and WWE had a ghostwriter working on an autobiography for me. He was halfway through, and it was awful, just boring. I took over as a way of trying to fix things, as I thought I could probably do a better job.
When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.
When I interviewed a bloke wearing a balaclava on Newsnight. He refused to remove it and halfway through our interview he forgot he was wearing it, took a sip of water and couldn't find his mouth. It's quite hard to hold it together when that happens.
A novel quite possibly won't be good and, even more possibly, will have not-good parts, but at least it won't shape-shift on you; at least you can say that you're halfway through and know that this maps onto some clear, visualizable chunk of narrative.
It's funny, because when you're younger you're in a rush to be 18 or 21 or whatever. But then you hit 30. And now, the days go by like hours. You think, 40, man, this could be the halfway point. It could be the three-quarters point, you know? Who knows?
My mom always wanted to go to Maryland to live there. Baltimore, actually. She had a best friend who lived there. She kept saying that she was going to move there and make that her home, but she only made it halfway across the country and got stuck in Iowa.
Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'
There are definitely times - and I think this is pretty common among cartoonists - where you spend an entire day trying to think of an idea, and you're like, 'I give up.' And then you go and take a shower or run an errand, and halfway there, you get an idea.
I wasn't going to great schools, because my parents didn't believe in public education. They wanted the education to be influenced by their religion, so I was going to these halfway education-slash-Christian schools that were like pop-up shop-style education.
'Troy' is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not 'The Iliad' alone. 'The Iliad' begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script.
I know how I felt when I saw things like 'Fame' on television when I was growing up and how that was an exceptional magnet for me to want to explore the theater. I can only assume that 'Smash' is doing that for anyone who is halfway interested in theater already.
There have been many times when I was working out intensely and in the best shape of my life, and then, for whatever reason, I got off track. Before I knew it, 3 or 4 months would go by, and all of a sudden, I'd find myself exhausted halfway up a flight of stairs!
I am very proud of The Saints and I'm very glad that I've been associated with them all these years, but the next record is the best record... has to be the philosophy for any band that remains even halfway decent or vibrant, and that is kind of where my head's at.
If I play somebody's mixtape, if it gets on my nerves halfway through because it's too loud or everything sounds the same, it makes me want to approach every song I do differently. I don't want somebody saying, 'That's enough of this,' when they listen to my music.
I'm not gonna play a part that doesn't instill some kind of fear in me. If I read a part, and suddenly, I'm thinking halfway through, 'I'm not sure I could get away with this,' I think of everything I can think of to keep me from doing it, that's the one I should do.
I was training in Spain for 15 months, and while I was there, my parents didn't want to be halfway around the world away from their 14-year-old daughter. So they migrated to the U.K. because they had Hungarian passports, and that's in the E.U., so they could work there.
When I'm putting a story together, I generally know the ending and a couple of the points halfway through, and I've got sort of an idea about the beginning, and although I do write the story one sentence at a time, when I'm thinking it up, I'm thinking it up all at once.
When I was 18, I was halfway up the Eiffel Tower with my friend, Tom, when we decided to stick our heads through the railings. The gap between the railings was exactly the right size to be able to put your head through and nearly get stuck. Which is exactly what happened.
I'm a big advocate of starting soccer young and always having the ball at your foot, but that's because I didn't do that. If I'd focused more on that when I was a kid, it would've been so helpful. It took me, like, halfway through college to feel comfortable with the ball.
The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down the first results page.
I ran off stage at my first gig. Halfway through it, I forgot my lines and didn't know what to do, so I just ran out of the building down towards a lake. I was going to throw myself in, but the compere came out and said, 'No, it's going well, come back and finish the gig!'
For, behind the scenes, halfway around the world in Mexico, were two decades of aggressive research on wheat that not only enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient with respect to wheat production but also paved the way to rapid increase in its production in other countries.
Every patient tends to bury the most important story inside some other story, just the way new writers often 'bury the lede.' 'Burying the lede' is an old journalism term for when you only find out the real point about halfway into the article, but it also applies to therapy.
Certainly to me it has been valuable to have to think through the basics of physics in order to present them in a halfway coherent form for a course. That has led me to ideas in research. Even freshman physics leads to thoughts that lead to other thoughts that are stimulating.
Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
I lived in Bandra East, on the 12th floor. There was a small earthquake; I could feel the building shaking. I was halfway down the stairs when I realised I'd forgotten my laptop, and all my scripts were on it. If I lost the laptop, I'd lose all my work. I ran back up to get it!
I don't have any great pickup lines. I was never an extrovert, so I always had to have someone meet me halfway. If she was interested, we'd come together, and if not ... When I became a movie actor and became well-known, it took care of itself. Maybe that's why I became an actor.
Traverse City sits halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, and our summer days are long. The light seems to take forever to vanish from the sky, and when it does, it goes out like someone folding a white sheet in the dark. A flare on the horizon. Then a rustle: Goodnight.
I think that reading is always active. As a writer, you can only go so far; the reader meets you halfway, bringing his or her own experience to bear on everything you've written. What I mean is that it is not only the writer's memory that filters experience, but the reader's as well.
What about Hong Chau? In typical supporting-part fashion, she shows up halfway through 'Downsizing,' already shrunk, an imperious Vietnamese house cleaner with a limp and sharp angles. The movie's satirical cleverness upstages its rage; then Ms. Chau proves she's capable of managing both.
I was spending all my time at the 'Crimson' - like, 70 hours a week - and I didn't go to class for, like, a year. I failed out of school. I had to leave Harvard, really, halfway through my tenure as the 'Crimson' managing editor. It was this incredibly humiliating and shocking experience.
If you are going to make a change, don't go halfway. Make it with conviction and stick with your new idea. Ignore the scoffers. Remember, it is a law of nature that if something is different you're going to be taunted, jeered, and told the world is flat. Let the doubters fall off the edge.
I think we're probably only about halfway through the number of revelations. I'm pretty certain there will be quite detailed stuff on other uses of covert surveillance. I suspect that emails will be the next scandal. And devices that track people moving around. That's just starting to come out.
I went to Australia from England when I was right at that age when you learn to read. It's a very confronting thing, traveling halfway around the world and having a mother who was deeply unhappy at ending up in Australia, so you look for some way to find comfort, I guess, and I found it in books.
When it was announced I had won the Tony Award, I was in Bangkok doing a movie with Judi Dench. I remember coming back from the location to the Oriental Hotel and hearing someone yelling across the reception area, 'You've won the Tony!' It was wonderful and strange to be halfway around the world.
In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'
I was so competitive, I wanted to win games but... I lost 13 games in my first three years in college. I lost 13 games in my first month in the league and it felt like nobody cared. So, eventually halfway through the season, I'm like 'well, why the hell do I care?' If they don't care, why do I care.
There can be no halfway house, where Britain continues to be out of Europe in name but is still run by Europe. There can be no halfway house when it comes to rule-taking and law-making from the E.U., and there is an overwhelming sense of frustration that Britain is being taken advantage of by the E.U.
I try to be a positive person, but I'm also always looking and wondering, 'Maybe this could be done differently.' As soon as your mind is in a critical mode, you're halfway through designing; as soon as you start thinking about whether something could be better, you're already halfway through a solution.
Many people send me letters in England saying, 'I want to be a war photographer,' and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There's wars going on out there; you don't have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile.
I didn't know the term 'synesthesia' until I was working on 'Cruel Summer.' Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.
Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasn't flown halfway around the world, that didn't travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasn't been sitting in a supermarket's refrigerator case for days.