Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, 'Will you all just shut up!' And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, 'What are you doing?!' I was like, 'You better get up here! I don't play the fighting games.'
I was often looked at as a leper by kids at school because I was a Jehovah's Witness. They didn't like it - you were 'weird'. And on Saturday mornings, you'd be knocking at their doors. I remember standing there with my mum and dad, thinking, 'Oh my God, I know whose door this is, and I'll have to see them on Monday.' It was terrible.
The reason socialism has failed around the world every time it's been tried is because people in socialist countries have looked at the United States and have said if they can have it that good, we can. It's a failed, flawed ideology, but if you ask socialists why it's always failed, it's because the United States has stood in the way.
I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to see somebody. I wanted to touch that person. I wanted to sound like them. I wanted to move like them. That' s what I want my fans to do. So that's why, everything that I do, the music I make, how I dress, it's all based off my lifestyle.
For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.
In the '80s, society created a caricature of what a hacker or a programmer looked like: a guy wearing a hoodie, drinking energy drinks, sitting in a basement somewhere coding. Today, programmers look like the men we see in the show 'Silicon Valley' on HBO. If you look at the message girls are getting, it's saying, 'This is not for you.'
My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.
In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.
My mom used to tell me stories at night, read books to me - and I read 'em over and over and over again. And you know what I learned from that? I went back and looked at everything - Why do I like reading the same stories over and over and over again? What, was I some kind of nincompoop? No - the narrative gave me connection with my mom.
We really just didn't realize the diversity of planetary types in our solar system. Pluto looked like a misfit because it was the only one we saw. And just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. They're large enough to make themselves round by self gravity, and they surely pass the test of planethood.
The Bible never tells us what Jesus looked like, and in the earliest surviving paintings of him, he is sometimes depicted as short-haired, sometimes as beardless, with no authoritative version winning out over the others. Yet around 400 A.D., all of the other competing images were replaced by the long-haired, bearded Jesus we know today.
I remember Wrestlemania VI, being in my locker room painting my face, about halfway done, and the production guys came, and they knocked on the door, and they came in. I was looking in the mirror at them, and they said, 'Hey, Warrior, we've got a cart to take you to the ring.' I just looked at them, and I said, 'I'm running to the ring.'
At the Cruiserweight Classic finale, I said... I don't know if people had looked it up, or if they had heard it before, but it was an old Zen proverb. 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, you chop wood, carry water.' It can be interpreted a lot of ways, but for the most part it's about staying in the moment.
I used to think I was ugly. I thought I looked like a camel. A person who doesn't love themselves, they will see anything that pops up on their face. I've seen squirrels, I've seen a bird, and I've seen all kinds of animals on my face. But that is the result of self-hate. I've learned to say: 'You know what? I am a beautiful black woman'.
When I was first diagnosed, I went out, as a book person, and got some books on cancer and looked up my version of the disease. It said that I had about a 5 percent chance of survival. I said, 'Gosh, well, it's been a good run.' What I didn't realize is that in the two years since those books were published, things had shifted dramatically.
Everybody who is anyone wanted to meet a real life gangster, and here's Joey Gallo hitting the scene. What more could you want with a gangster? He looked the part. They call it gangster chic. He dressed like the 'Reservoir Dogs' - black suit, white shirt, skinny black tie. You know, he had the whole look down. And the big shades, of course.
Coming from Montreal, Patrick Roy was the guy that everybody looked up to. He was consistent and successful early in his career; he won the Stanley Cup when he was really young and he played with a great organization. For me it was also a French thing, like one of us had made it that big in the NHL, and you tried to follow in his footsteps.
I think when I first realized that something interesting had happened was probably in 1994. There was a 25th anniversary of the ARPANET celebration and... somebody asked the question, 'Where did email come from?' I remembered that I had done this little program back in 1971. People looked back and nobody could find anything that predated it.
The home ministry's role should be focused. There are so many items under it today; it has to look after even official languages. There should be a minister looking after internal security, and the remaining things should go under another ministry. Things like official languages can be looked after by the human resources development ministry.
In 2010, Strikeforce came to Houston, and DC was something like 5-0 or 6-0, and I'd seen him at the expo. I seen him walking around and I seen he had a pink cast on his hand, and I was like, this guy is way too fat... because he looked shorter and fatter. Because back then I was slim, I was like 235. So, I was like, man, I could take this guy.
I just remember watching Federer the first year he won Wimbledon. He was struggling with his back problem. I remember it vividly. It looked like there was a chance he was not going to finish. He had that look in his eye. Then, somehow, he found the wherewithal to dig a little deeper, and suddenly he wins the thing, and he's a different player.
At the time that George Lucas made the first 'Star Wars,' space was always presented as pristine. And he wanted to show that they may be fabulous vehicles, but they've been driven some miles. And, without anyone thinking about it or thinking that was going to help make it a pop hit, everybody believed in that world, because it looked inhabited.
So when it came to role models, I looked at presidents' wives. Of course, you're talking about a farm girl who stood in the fields, dreaming, years ago, wishing she was that kind of person. But if I had been that kind of person, do you think I could sing with the emotions I do? You sing with those emotions because you've had pain in your heart.
I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, flying helicopters. I'd lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief. And I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I'd trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it.
Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.
And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I've always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.
When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an 'order from Al Capone,' Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'
You want to please society. You want to be happy. You want to be well liked. You want to be held in high esteem and be respected. These are real things. You want respect from your peers, respect from your loved ones; you want to be looked up to for your achievements and your accomplishments. All of this requires conformity in some form or another.
They used to call me Firefly when I was a little girl, and I always tried to figure out why I was being called a firefly. I was really black, black, black from the sun. After being in Jamaica for 13 years, my eyes were really beady and white, and my skin was really black. I must have really looked like a fly. My eyes looked like lights, like stars.
Growing up where I grew up, we looked to athletes. They were our first heroes. They came from the same places we came from. I mean, you can't watch TV and see someone who is successful that you can really relate to. That person isn't real; he doesn't exist. But athletes traveled the world, had these big houses and gave their families a better life.
When 'Mortal Kombat' came out, I was living in an apartment in the Venice Canals in L.A. I didn't get paid a huge amount of money, so I had a nice apartment, but I couldn't afford to have it furnished. It was kind of like Robert De Niro's apartment in 'Heat': It looked like I was ready to walk away from it in ten seconds, because there was nothing.
