Hal Quotes

I challenge myself everywhere, onstage, on the golf course. Hey, isn't that the point of it all? To keep getting better? Otherwise why do it? ~ Hal Linden

I've always said that I benefit, as an actor, from not having the illusion of security. ~ Hal Sparks

For all his learning or sophistication, man still instinctively reaches towards that force beyond. Only arrogance can deny its existence, and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand. In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is. ~ Hal Borland

We argued most of the way home. I thought it would be nicest for Hal to take his two dollars in to Mother first, bu Muriel didn't think so. She always wanted to do things as if it were a play. "That wouldn't be any good," she said. "If Hal goes in first and gives her the money, she'll start crying right away. But if you give her yours first, she'll just say we were smart children to make so much money. And then I'll give her mine, and she'll say, 'Why, why ... where in the world did you get so much money?' And then Phillip can give her his, and she'll look like she thought maybe we'd robbed a bank. And then when Hal gives her his, we'll all want to cry."
It worked just the way she thought it would. ~ Ralph Moody

Need nothing. Enjoy everything. Love all. ~ Hal Elrod

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan?
'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.'
Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one?
'Ummm... no.'
I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying.
Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company.
'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said.
'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.'
'Flidais did it.'
'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.'
I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there.
'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!'
'And every one of them in heat.'
'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!'
He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering.
'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.'
I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one ~ Kevin Hearne

This is the fiction that I'm referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative. ~ Hal Duncan

Kyra." Fred caught Kyra's eyes. "I'm not in love with Ariana and I don't want half the kingdom."
"You don't?"
He shook his head. "But I might stick around for a little while longer. There are some interesting things in the Kingdom of Mohr."
"Like what?"
"Like a certain funny and extremely talented potioner."
Kyra took a breath. "I have to warn you, Hal isn't that great as a boyfriend. He's pretty self absorbed. ~ Bridget Zinn

If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy. ~ Hal Holbrook

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.
~ Hal Borland

Hal wills himself to stay objective and not form any judgments before he has serious data, hoping desperately for some sort of hopeful feeling to emerge. ~ David Foster Wallace

You fight dandelions all weekend, and late Monday afternoon there they are, pert as all get out, in full and gorgeous bloom, pretty as can be, thriving as only dandelions can in the face of adversity. ~ Hal Borland

I want to know why a fire glows, and why flame dust kills. I want my children or theirs ... to know what makes this radio work, ... and someday this rocket. I want to know much-more than I can learn, no doubt; but if I can start my people learning for themselves ... ~ Hal Clement

No one thinks Las Vegas is real; it is illusion, but visitors willingly suspend disbelief and pretend. ~ Hal Rothman

April is a promise that May is bound to keep. ~ Hal Borland

There's no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire. ~ Hal Hartley

Instead of complaining about how things should be, I embraced how things were. I stopped putting energy into wishing my life were any different - into wishing bad things didn't happen to me - and instead focused 100% on making the best of what I had. Since I ~ Hal Elrod

Politics has become incendiary. People don't find it so funny now so I have to be careful, but I have to wake them up with some truths and the truths I aim at them are over 100 years old. Facts that no one can dispute. ~ Hal Holbrook

Boredom is your mind and body's way of telling you you're not living up to your potential. ~ Hal Sparks

Remember, when you change your inner world - your life - then your outer world - your life situation - will improve in parallel. ~ Hal Elrod

Hal and Richard show all the good will of Cain and Abel. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

It's better to waste money than time. You can always get more money. ~ Hal Sparks

Google will make us more informed. The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world. ~ Hal Varian

To write good religious science fiction, or indeed good religious fiction of any kind, is a challenge but one that it would be worthwhile trying to meet. It seems a pity the field has been apparently abandoned to pernicious rubbish like 'The Da Vinci Code', though this seems already, mercifully, to have faded away. In this, as in other areas, we could do with another C. S. Lewis to re-state the principles of Christianity in terms to stir the imagination. ~ Hal G.P. Colebatch

One thing Hal had learned was that they had to try to keep moving forward, keep trying to communicate and understand their differences. Pretending they didn't exist wasn't the answer. ~ Labbe, Marguerite

Hills. We love them. We hate them. They make us strong. They make us weak. Today I
chose to embrace hills. ~ Hal Higdon

The wise begin with whys." Everyone wants to be happy, healthy, and successful, but wanting is rarely an effective strategy for getting. Those who overcome the temptations of mediocrity and achieve everything they want in life have an extraordinarily compelling why that drives them. They ~ Hal Elrod

Does Grandpa love to baby-sit his grandchildren? Are you kidding? By day he is too busy taking hormone shots at the doctor's or chip shots on the golf course. At night he and Grandma are too busy doing the cha-cha. ~ Hal Boyle

Popular and unpopular don't necessarily map to shit and shinola, of course. ~ Hal Duncan

It often takes catching a glimpse of how our life would be without something that's valuable to us for us to realize just how valuable it is. ~ Hal Elrod

Movies, novels, TV shows - these are the water fountains of today. We thirst for stories which speak to us by representing us, but we go to the water fountains in the centre of town looking for that, and we're turned away, sent to the ghetto. ~ Hal Duncan

Here is how to handle being a feral prodigy. ~ David Foster Wallace

Ranger locked eyes with me. "Please," he said.
Tank and Hal were goggle-eyed. They weren't used to "please." I wasn't used to it either. But I liked it.
Okay," I said. "Be careful. He's insane. ~ Janet Evanovich

I do know one thing: I wish people were doing more dangerous musicals, more courageous musicals and not just falling into the trap of trying to figure out what the public wants, because you find out that the public very often wants what's good. ~ Hal Price

Someone needs to remind American CEOs that if you can't run a company that is innovative, financially sound and doesn't poison the rest of us, You can't run a company. ~ Hal Sparks

The 1st secret to success is to simply master your ability to get started, to take the first step. If you want to get physically fit, simply pack a gym bag everyday and get in the car. Once you do, where else are you going to go? ~ Hal Elrod

Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him ... a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib ... The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance. ~ Hal Lindsey

I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,
To share with me in glory any more:
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere; ~ William Shakespeare

Some days you can almost see Hal like flit in and out of a match, like some part of him leaves and hovers and then comes back. ~ David Foster Wallace

Most 'reality' shows aren't reality at all. They're game shows with no prize. Like 'Rock of Love.' His aren't genuine feelings. Then again, Bob Barker didn't really care whether or not you won the toaster. Sorry to shatter everyone's dreams. ~ Hal Sparks

It was much more fun playing with him than against him. If you wanted one pitcher to start the seventh game of the World Series, which he did in 1945, you'd pick Hal Newhouser. ~ George Kell

Whenever the end is
Do you think you can see it?
Well, until you get there
Go on, go ahead and scream it
Just say it ~ Hal Leonard Publishing Company

It's the doors that make a prison, he says, not the walls. The doors you don't even try to open. ~ Hal Duncan

The moment you accept responsibility for EVERYTHING in your life, is the moment you gain the power to change ANYTHING in your life. ~ Hal Elrod

July is a blind date with summer. ~ Hal Borland

I hope we've got a lot of fairways and greens. We'll go from there. ~ Hal Sutton

He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history. ~ Hal Borland

I remember one game when I pitched in Yankee Stadium and gave up five runs in the first inning. It would have been easy to quit, but I shut 'em out the rest of the way, and we came back and won the game. ~ Hal Newhouser

Fuck the epistemic modality; this is alethic modality we're talking now, not factuality but possibility. ~ Hal Duncan

Discipline creates lifestyle. ~ Hal Elrod

The reinvention of American culture as purely the self catapulted Las Vegas to prominence. The city took sin and made it choice
a sometimes ambiguous choice, but choice nonetheless. Combined with a visionary approach to experience that melded Hollywood and Americans' taste for comfort and self-deception, Las Vegas grew into the last American frontier city, as foreign at times as Prague but as quintessential as Peoria. In Las Vegas, you can choose your fantasy; in the rest of America, you don't always get to pick. ~ Hal Rothman

If 'Airplane!' comes on, it's like a comfort film. You can always guarantee a laugh watching that movie. ~ Hal Sparks

Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words. ~ Hal Borland

The hush comes with the deepening of Autumn; but it comes gradually. Our ears are attuned to it, day by quieter day. But even now, if one awakens in the deep darkness of the small hours, one can hear it, a foretaste of Winter silence. It's a little painful now, and a little lonely because it is so strange. ~ Hal Borland

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. ~ Hal Abelson

IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung
for one reason alone
because it works.
A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing
measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era
we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas. ~ Hakim Bey

Kids growing up in today's generation are constantly documenting their experience. It's different - how does that change their sense of self when everything becomes a story that you are telling? ~ Hal Niedzviecki

Your level of success, in every area of your life, will always parallel your level of personal development. If you want Level 10 success in any area of your life, you must first develop yourself to be a Level 10 person in that area. ~ Hal Elrod

You can't make people laugh for more than half an hour and be consistent. ~ Hal Roach

We are our own worst enemies. How banal and trite that sounds, but [ ... ] have come to believe that all the greatest truths are trite and banal, when spoken aloud in their simplest and most honest terms. Perhaps they can only be imparted in the Cant, in a language which writes itself onto your heart so that you understand not just the words but all the shattering ramifications of of a sentence which, when heard without true understanding, seems quite risibly simplistic.
We are our own worst enemies.
People die. ~ Hal Duncan

Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting. ~ David Foster Wallace

I used to envy kids who had an old-fashioned Grandpa. Not any more. I've got a new ambition. Now I just want to become a modern-type Grandpa myself-and really start living. ~ Hal Boyle

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes ... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. ~ Hal Abelson

So, it's cool that, yes, Hal Jordan is a superhero, but my character is a real-world hero in her own life. ~ Blake Lively

Screw the dialogue, let's wreck some cars. ~ Hal Needham

There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion. ~ Hal Abelson

But functional was not an aesthetic criterion that Flashjack, as a faery, had terribly high on his list of priorities; it was well below shiny and nowhere near weird. ~ Hal Duncan

American soldiers in battle don't fight for what some president says on T.V., they don't fight for mom, apple pie, the American flag ... they fight for one another. ~ Hal Moore

You'd think after 8 years of things called 'The Patriot Act' and 'No Child Left Behind' they would know that we have figured out the 'Call it what it ain't' PR ploy by now, but ... um ... no. ~ Hal Sparks

Commit to being better. Your life gets better only after you get better. ~ Hal Elrod

- Come Inanna, enter, Neti said to her, and as Inanna entered the first gate, the sugurra, crown of the steppe, was taken from her head.
- What is this? asked Inanna
- Quiet, Inanna, she was told. The customs of the city of the dead are perfect. They may not be questioned. ~ Hal Duncan

What is the purpose of any one workout? Enjoyment? Improvement? Coach said so? Whatever, the hour you run often is the best hour of the day. ~ Hal Higdon

We mistakenly believe that who we were is who we are, thus limiting our true potential in the present, based on the limitations of our past. ~ Hal Elrod

There is no better day than today to do the things you've been putting off. Take action; it's the only way to change your life! ~ Hal Elrod

You can't rush art." I crumpled another lost attempt and tossed it behind me. "Besides, patience is a virtue."

"It's a virtue until it's a waste of time," he pointed out.

The cello unleashed a few notes that sounded strangely bright for such an instrument, and Hal nodded in its direction. "See; even a musical instrument agrees with me. ~ Mirriam Neal

If I have anything, it's tenacity. ~ Hal Sparks

Those who only do what they feel like, don't do much. To be successful at anything you must take action even when you don't feel like it, knowing it is the action itself that will produce the motivation you need to follow through. ~ Hal Elrod

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform. ~ Hal Price

I never meant to push or shove you. Do you know how much I love you? ~ Hal Ketchum

Though I'm not religious, I am interested in religion. I read a lot of history and I think it came out of that. I just think I couldn't understand certain eras of history without knowing what these people believed in. ~ Hal Hartley

Some very hungry people gathered to discuss how to distribute a small amount of food. It was understood that each church was supposed to take care of its own. The local Episcopal rector said, "My church, follow me." The Presbyterian minister said, "Mine, follow me." And the other denominations did the same. There were a lot of folks left. Then, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, stepped forward and said: "All of you who belong to nobody, you follow me. ~ Hal Brady

Jerry Springer' is just kind of the chubby, redneck version of throwing Christians to the lions. ~ Hal Sparks

In my district, I know we have thousands of little creeks and streams, some of which only fill up when it rains. Nationwide, they're in the tens of thousands. ~ Hal Rogers

For the Fall of the year is more than three months bounded by an equinox and a solstice. It is a summing up without the finality of year's end. ~ Hal Borland

Why waste your time and energy looking for the negative, finding it and then bringing other people down by talking about it all the time? Doesn't it make a lot more sense to look for the good, find the good and then celebrate it with others? ~ Hal Urban

Suddenly Hal burst through the nearby trees and came to an abrupt halt when he saw her. "Cassie, are you hurt?"
He asked it so casually, as if he came upon women being held at sword point by nude men all the time. ~ Donna Grant

A root, a stem, a leaf, some means of capturing sunlight and air and making food - in sum, a plant. The green substance of this earth, the chlorophyll, is all summed up in the plants. Without them we perish, all of us who are flesh and blood. ~ Hal Borland

There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things. ~ Hal Borland

A 3K word story might well be done in some caffeine-and-nicotine-fuelled 36 hour session, and at the end of it, there'll be a few passes of editing required, but I basically have a polished draft. ~ Hal Duncan

Often when people feel tired - at any time of the day - what they really need is more water, not more sleep. ~ Hal Elrod

In the big city, if the man next door happens to be a slum landlord, a Mafia bag man, or a long distance runner, what does it matter, as long as he puts his garbage out on Tuesdays? ~ Hal Higdon

Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker. It is a very modern notion that exploits the power of the long tail. ~ Hal Finney

Do I have a small movie in me? Yeah, probably, when I'm 60. But I'm not Hal Ashby, I'm not Roman Polanski. I'm true to myself. Whether you like it or not. ~ Brett Ratner

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon? ~ Hal Borland

The Jews became a victim of their own success. The more they restored the land and made it fertile, the more Muslims were attracted from nearby Muslim countries and flocked to Jewish-settled areas for jobs. These same poor Muslims who benefited from Jewish-created jobs later charged that the Jews had stolen land that had been in their families since time immemorial. This remains one of the most colossal lies of history. Yet the West has swallowed the lie hook, line, and sinker. This lie will eventually lead to Armageddon. ~ Hal Lindsey

It's true that everything happens for a reason, but it is always our responsibility to choose the reasons. ~ Hal Elrod

I should have loved,' Hal said after a very long silence. Neville's eyes filled with tears. ' Aye. You Should have loved. ~ Sara Douglass

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement. ~ Hal Abelson

How ruthless and vile and hard and right the young are. ~ Hal Porter

I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.'
...
'I don't mind,' Hal said softly. 'I could wait forever.'
'That's what you think,' the voice said. The connection was cut. ~ David Foster Wallace