Classic Australian Quotes

The (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) stories were great, for one. The thing that makes him a remarkable character is how he can withstand all of these different interpretations and different styles and, that's what makes a classic character a classic character; they keep coming back and you see them in a new way every time. ~ Laura Linney

'Shantaram' is fantastic. An Australian prisoner escapes & joins the mafia in India? Sign me up. I love stuff that is based on true stories. ~ Hasan Minhaj

I have an affinity for the old Seattle coffee shops, places like the Green Onion and the Copper Kettle, the classic kind of coffee bar - little places that served breakfast, lunch and dinner and have pretty much disappeared. ~ Tom Douglas

The script was classic Joe Eszterhas, intelligent, steamy and provocative. At one time, Eszterhas was Hollywood's highest paid writer, illiterate rock and roll bad boy whose 14 films glorified sex, drugsa nd cigarettes. Eszterhas also fought publicly with producers and politicians. In 1995 he argued that some of the misdeeds of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations were more obscene than anything in an "R" rated movie. ~ David Shuster

It sounded nothing like the classic "That's all folks" that the character did. So everytime I'm asked to do it - and nine out of ten "Looney Tunes" shows ends with Porky coming out saying "That's all folks" - I'll say to them, which one do you want? ~ Bob Bergen

Not every classic book was the best thing ever. Each book has flaws, and it's up to writers to change things. ~ Tim Holtorf

A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books which he has merely skimmed, lapping at them, as the classic proverb puts it; "As the dogs drink of Nilus." Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When I saw the sun bears at the Oakland Zoo, I immediately was drawn to them. Not to be ornery, but regarding what you said about the speaker identifying with the bear: I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that the speaker feels that the bear must share his sadness, or whatever else he is feeling. That would be classic pathetic fallacy, which is certainly generative for poetry, but here the speaker appears actually to be rejecting that idea. ~ Matthew Zapruder

Rap records don't make you feel good no more. Six months after release, it can't come back as a classic. ~ Wyclef Jean

Autism is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by social withdrawal, by repetitive behaviors and by some kind of focal attention in its classic form. Basically, it's an inability to relate to others. ~ Harvey V. Fineberg

Music gives me a lot of peace, either classic music with its structure or the spontaneity of Miles Davis. It brings the best in you. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

When possums were introduced in 1837 to start a fur industry, no one predicted that these Australian neighbours would naturalize with destructive enthusiasm, wreaking havoc on gardens and bush alike. Up to 20 million possums a year were killed during the height of the fur trade, but this barely checked their rapid expansion. ~ Bee Dawson

(backpacker having conversation with Lizzie the Australian main character)
Backpacker: 'What's the drinking age in Australia?'
'eighteen'
'is that enforced'
Lizzie thought for a second before answering seriously, 'yes, they make us drink ~ Catherine Deveny

I took a couple steps away from him and stopped in front of a framed colored poster of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable from the movie Gone with the Wind. I studied the pair, Gable with his mysterious mustache and Leigh in her red ball gown. I'd become a fan of the classic, partially because of my mother's suggestion that I looked a lot like a younger Vivien Leigh, with my dark wavy hair and sea green eyes. And as usual, I'd believed her for a little while. ~ J.C. Patrick

Everything imaginable had been done or tried out there. It wasn't the feeling you had looking out on his own land. In Australia, you looked out and saw the possible, the spaces, the maybes... ~ Tim Winton

When you're kissing on camera, it becomes an issue visually. It looks like a skinny dinosaur creature is trying to kiss someone. It doesn't look good. It does not look like the classic romance kisses. If an actress is 5'3 and I don't bend down to kiss her, she would probably be kissing my lower sternum. ~ David Walton

Malcolm Fraser, in the marrow of his bones, despised racism. He despised people who discriminated against other people because they were different and in particular because of the colour of their skin, and I don't think there has been a time in Australian politics where there has been more attention to the importance of that value. ~ George Brandis

You know, I was really privileged to meet Woody Allen, who is now a filmmaker, let's be honest. He's also an actor. And he's classic. And because I have no conception of what classic fashion is now, I respond to his slightly outdated sensibilities. ~ Ezra Miller

All the textbooks talk about avoidance as a classic hallmark of anxiety disorder. So you need a therapist who is sympathetic and understanding but will also push you to do precisely the things that scare you. ~ Scott Stossel

There is no need to "believe" in Jupiter or Wotan - something that is no more ridiculous then believing in Yahweh however - to be pagan. Contemporary paganism does not consist of erecting altars to Apollo or reviving the worship of Odin. Instead it implies looking behind religion and, according to a now classic itinerary, seeking for the "mental equipment" that produced it, the inner world it reflects, and how the world it depicts as apprehended. In short, it consists of viewing the gods as "centers of value" and the beliefs they generate as value systems: gods and beliefs may pass away, but the values remain. ~ Alain De Benoist

What are they doing here, these difficult young persons and their still more difficult guardians? This - this sacred Elysian garden of the great humanistic tradition of classic wisdom and classic art - must not be invaded by clamorous babes and agitated elders, must not be profaned either by the plaudits or the strictures of the unlettered mob. Somewhere in human life, and where should it be if not in the cloistered seclusion of noble literature? - there must be an escape from the importunities of such people and from the responsibilities of the ignorance they so jealously guard. ~ John Cowper Powys

If Australia finds it has a strong Australian dollar, and it has higher unemployment, then it would have to respond, and that would either be by increasing domestic demand or by weakening its own currency. ~ Ben Bernanke

She was classic Wyoming, that indiscriminate age between thirty and a hundred where the women find a comfort for themselves and just settle in. ~ Craig Johnson

Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf. ~ Prince Philip

You can be a rich person alone. You can be a smart person alone. But you cannot be a complete person alone. For that you must be part of, and rooted in, an olive grove. This truth was once beautifully conveyed by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his interpretation of a scene from Gabriel García Márquez's classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude: Márquez tells of a village where people were afflicted with a strange plague of forgetfulness, a kind of contagious amnesia. Starting with the oldest inhabitants and working its way through the population, the plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects. One young man, still unaffected, tries to limit the damage by putting labels on everything. "This is a table," "This is a window," "This is a cow; it has to be milked every morning." And at the entrance to the town, on the main road, he puts up two large signs. One reads "The name of our village is Macondo," and the larger one reads "God exists." The message I get from that story is that we can, and probably will, forget most of what we have learned in life - the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the address and phone number of the first house we lived in when we got married - and all that forgetting will do us no harm. But if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need waterproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, and all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas. ~ Tim Dorsey

Across the board, Australian films need to have a lot more money spent on selling them. ~ Hugo Weaving

'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach - Grant Green and Larry Young did it, with a bossa nova beat on the funky side. ~ George Benson

The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan. ~ Stephen King

This isn't bickering. This is classic mother-daughter communications. I've been reading up on it. ~ Christina Baker Kline

A way a lone a last a loved a long the - ~ James Joyce

I've never been comfortable with one-on-one interviews, preferring the anonymity of a group discussion where I can sit inconspicuously at the back of the room. To be honest, I prefer my own company, reading a classic British novel, curled up in a chair in the campus library. Not sitting twitching nervously in a colossal glass-and-stone edifice. ~ E.L. James

Magne Furuholmen is a very dear friend of mine. A-ha are a classic pop band and they've got some brilliant songs. I'd say 'The Living Daylights' was one of my favourite Bond tunes: regardless of it being a Bond song, it stands alone as a great piece of music. ~ Guy Berryman

If I'm going to dress up, I like things that are quite long and classic. I like feeling dressed up and like a lady. ~ Lorde

We believe in the Australian promise; that if you work hard, you won't be left behind. ~ Wayne Swan

People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Australian genre films were a lot of fun because they were legitimate genre movies. They were real genre films, and they dealt, in a way like the Italians did, with the excess of genre, and that has been an influence on me. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Are you going to tell me how awesome that kiss was or are you going to ignore it?"
She shakes her head and laughs at me. "That wasn't even a real kiss," she says. "You didn't even try to put your tongue in my mouth."
... "I didn't have to put my tongue in your mouth," I say. "My kisses are that intense. I don't even really have to do anything. The only reason I pulled back was that I was sure we were about to experience a classic, 'When Harry met Sally' moment. ~ Colleen Hoover

Although the rudiments of snobbery are there, its finer developments are basically alien to the Australian soul - that is, if Australians have a soul; many people believe that they are too matter-of-fact and down-to-earth to have such fancy commodities. ~ George Mikes

We're not like a nostalgia act, or the normal classic rock act - we're a really good musical organization, ... You're going to hear some blues, some jazz, a little of everything. The guys in the band are great musicians. When we play, we're there for real. It's not about posing, strutting in tights, that kind of stuff. It's all about music, and I've always respected my audience that way. ~ Steve Miller