On Being Quotes

I didn't plan on being a comedian. I didn't plan on getting married and I didn't plan on having kids, but I did all those things. ~ Rodney Carrington

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

My strength is basically my get off. It is overpowering. I can get after the quarterback on first, second and third down. I pride myself on being an every down guy. ~ Darius Philon

[On being deaf:] We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is, either to sink under the trial, or to be made callous by it. The best is, to be as wise as is possible under a great disability, and as happy as is possible under a great privation. ~ Harriet Martineau

As much as love is the source of power for those who are centred in their hearts, as much fear is the source of illusionary power for those who insist on being led by their heads alone. ~ Raphael Zernoff

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

A lot of students just don't understand what's out there," she told me, shaking her head. "You have the kids who plan on being baseball players but don't even play on the high school team because the coach is mean to them. ~ J.D. Vance

John's explosion left Abigail in a quandary. Priding herself on being a good wife, she cheerfully accepted that her main role was to soothe the cares of her adored if sometimes baffling spouse. Being a wife required at least the appearance of submission. On the other hand, it would be cruel to abandon a husband altogether to his follies when it was so easy to correct him with a little tact. ~ Diane Jacobs

Own who you have become, by choice or circumstance, and only then can you concentrate on being who you really want and need to be. ~ Anoynomous

Gwen was kind of amazed. A mother with several degrees and a prestigious position at an Ivy League college did not ensure that she'd be any less embarrassing to her child than a mother who became a nurse through night school. Gwen knew this when Alla launched into her "unfortunate changes in my vagina after the birth of Lachlan" discussion.

"No. It was his shoulders. He's always had very large shoulders. I mean look at him. Even as a baby they were freakishly long."

"Freakishly?" Lock snapped.

"They stretched me right out."

"Mom!"

Brody shrugged and reached for more moo goo gai pork. "I didn't mind."

"Dad!"

"Well, darling, you were always quite large, so it made things a little easier for both of us when it came to sex."

"Mom!"

Alla shook her head. "I don't know what happened to you, Lachlan MacRyrie." She turned to Gwen. "I've always insisted on being quite open about human bodies when talking to my children. There's no shame in a woman's body. And like everything else in the world, it ages. So while you still have the exquisite body you've been blessed with, Gwen dear, and that prebirth vagina - enjoy it."

"Is there any way to get you to stop?" Lock begged. ~ Shelly Laurenston

Just keep telling me I can't do it. I thrive on being obstinate. ~ Lori Lesko

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They're solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive. ~ Douglas Adams

I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over. ~ Rebecca West

On being invited to the Jaipur Festival, I was naturally nervous about attempting an opening address to such an elite gathering. ~ Amartya Sen

The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful, we try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis. And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be. ~ Nick Saban

I planned on being successful ever since I was young. To me, this is nothing to be surprised about. ~ Jimmy Rollins

The writer, indeed every real artist, was the devil, rivalling God in creativity, trying even to surpass him. God was surely man's most fatal creation, the devil's kitsch bitch. It was God, with his insistence on being worshipped and admired, who made the argument of art necessary, keeping the fire of dissent alive in men and women. This dissident was the artist, who spanned with his imagination reason and unreason, the under and the over, the dream and the world, men and women. ~ Hanif Kureishi

You can never betray the people who are dead, so you go on being a public Jew; the dead can't answer slurs, but I'm here. I would love to think that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but he doesn't. ~ Anita Brookner

Writers, by nature, are going to be slightly more delusional than others because we're dreamers, we imagine the unlikely, that's how we create... Rather than hoping my delusion becomes a reality, I'd prefer to keep on being deluded, to dream bigger and to imagine greater. My greater worry would be becoming less delusional . ~ Rowena Wiseman

I just don't see the point in beating myself up. I think it's more productive to concentrate on being a better person right now than punishing myself for who I was in the past. ~ Megan McCafferty

She ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularise, mentioned such works by our best moralists, such collections of fine letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind. ~ Jane Austen

For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it. ~ Lawrence Martin

Imperialism is the underlying motor of racism. The underlying reason that racism keeps on being promoted in all of its various forms. ~ Assata Shakur

Nothing that ever happens in life can take away the fact that I am me. So I have to go on being me. ~ Monica Dickens

Actually, the "leap of faith" - to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed upon it - is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a "leap" that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. This effort is actually too much for the human mind, and leads to delusions and manias. Religion understands perfectly well that the "leap" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, which is why it often doesn't in fact rely on "faith" at all but instead corrupts faith and insults reason by offering evidence and pointing to confected "proofs." This evidence and these proofs include arguments from design, revelations, punishments, and miracles. Now that religion's monopoly has been broken, it is within the compass of any human being to see these evidences and proofs as the feeble-minded inventions that they are. ~ Christopher Hitchens

[On being told Mary, Queen of Scots, was taller than she:] Then she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low. ~ Elizabeth I

People who insist on being addressed as "doctor" because they have Ph.D.'s, as if these degrees represent an important achievement, rather than a reluctance to leave college; ~ Dave Barry

Surprise, surprise - the good guys don't always win. Sometimes, they're lucky if they just get to keep on being the good guys. ~ Anthony Breznican

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, "Let there be a Page, and many a Page," and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good. ~ Chila Woychik

If a book can save - redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane - surely, there must be a God. ~ Chila Woychik

It is quite uninteresting; that is why one comes out.
- Temeraire, on being inside an egg ~ Naomi Novik

I never want to be told, "Hey, this is what you do best, and this is the only thing you're going to do." And there are other people that are put into that box. Or unable to navigate through all the different genres. Some people insist on being a tough guy even though it's not happening. People only want to see them in leading romantic roles. Yet they continue to try and force something that doesn't feel organic to people. ~ Mark Wahlberg

It is agreed that all sound which is the material of music is of three sorts. First is harmonica, which consists of vocal music; second is organica, which is formed from the breath; third is rhythmica, which receives its numbers from the beat of the fingers. For sound is produced either by the voice, coming through the throat; or by the breath, coming through the trumpet or tibia, for example; or by touch, as in the case of the cithara or anything else that gives a tuneful sound on being struck. ~ Isidore Of Seville

I'm strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity - taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages. ~ Krista Tippett

Did we ever plan on being billionaires? No, but we wanted to be millionaires. ~ Diane Hendricks

I'm drawn to the Jewish notion of the soul, nephesh, which is not something preexistent but emergent - forming in and through physicality and relational experience. This suggests that we need our bodies to claim our souls. The body is where every virtue lives or dies, but more: our bodies are access points to mystery. And in some way that barely makes sense to me, I'm sure that we have to have feet planted on the ground, literally and metaphysically, to reach towards what is beyond and above us. ~ Krista Tippett

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake". ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I used to be focused on being the dopest rapper in the game, and then once that became what I was, I wanted something different, and I wanted to become the best businessman in the game. I wanted to learn how to master the business like I mastered the rap. ~ Snoop Dogg

A fundamental lesson on being fired: Never lie about it. People will know what you're saying is a cover-up for how you really feel - embarrassed, discouraged, and afraid. ~ Mika Brzezinski

One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of peoples walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Oments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible's puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn't have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That's one way I'd define the feeling of faith now. ~ Krista Tippett

I pride myself on being courteous to people, and trying to fashion good relations. ~ John Bercow

The sunrise, of course, doesn't care
if we watch it or not.
It will keep on being beautiful
even if no one bothers to look at it. ~ Gene Amole

Sister Simone Campbell: I sometimes think we, in the United States, think we ought to do something about everything and that it's my job to fix everything. Well, it's not. That's way beyond us. It's more important, I think, that we listen deeply to our stories and then see where it leads. And that's the piece. If we all do our part ... Whatever our part is, wherever we are. Whatever our part is. Just do one thing. That's all we have to do. The guilt - or the curse - of the progressive, the liberal, the whatever, is that we think we have to do it all. And then we get overwhelmed. I get all those solicitations in the mail. And I can't do everything. And so I don't do anything. But that's the mistake. Community is about just doing my part. ~ Krista Tippett

I plan on being a friend, a good leader and a good governor over these next three years. ~ John Rowland

Rose insisted on being taken to shore to fulfill her duty to her cause, but the lifeboat carrying her capsized in rough surf. She might have survived had she not been carrying $2,000 in gold for the Confederacy strapped beneath her clothing. The weight of the gold pulled her under and she drowned on October 1, 1864 ~ Jack Steinberg

One of the people on my Mom's Council,
he used to be a boxer.
My Mom always says he always says Get up on the 1.
You don't want them to count to 2
'cause then it's easy to count 3
while you go on being down. Always
Get up on the 1. ~ Virginia Euwer Wolff

Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty
self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken
by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they
considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others
who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided
themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their
righteous judgments. ~ Radclyffe Hall

I'm not perfect. But I am trying every day to concentrate on being better. ~ Allen Iverson

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too. ~ Natalie Babbitt

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: 'On the other hand, maybe I should have lived. ~ Barbara Walters

Men want children later, but women can't rely on being able to. So I'm all for scientific advances and the help they can give people. ~ Mariella Frostrup

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told. ~ Frank McCourt

It's my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn't planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he's nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits.
Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I'd agreed to go. I guess he'd figured it'd be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don't want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me.
Always.
I finally spot him in the crowd--it's not too hard, since he's a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground.
Oh my God, this can't be happening. I've fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I'm supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming.
Heck, it's a full-blown garden at this point.
"Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!" comes the principal's voice. "Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She's escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. ~ Kristi Cook

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. 'Sluggard' - why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a gluteton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That 'sublime and beautiful' weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then - oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything 'sublime and beautiful.' I should have s ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Proverbs 1:20-23 20 Wisdom shouts in the streets. She cries out in the public square. 21 She calls to the crowds along the main street, to those gathered in front of the city gate: 22 How long, you simpletons, will you insist on being simpleminded? How long will you mockers relish your mocking? How long will you fools hate knowledge? 23 Come and listen to my counsel. I'll share my heart with you and make you wise. ~ Anonymous

One guy I dated insisted on being called 'visually impaired.'" Amelie made finger quotes in the air. "I don't really understand that. To me it's like calling someone 'melanin deficient' instead of calling them white. People are so weird. I am a white, blind girl. I am a twenty-two-year old, white, blind girl. Can we just call it like it is? ~ Amy Harmon

We make our days pleasant or miserable. If we insist on being miserable, irritable and nasty, more than likely the day will give us exactly what we give it. A day is too valuable to waste on misery and unhappiness. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

Did Muddy Waters play an acoustic? Well of course he did. But did he turn his back on being able to plug it in and play louder? No, he plugged in and turned it up and got miles and miles ahead of the game in one fateful act of just plugging in. ~ Billy Gibbons

Read about some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don't believe in fighting, and I wonder how long the rest of us can count on being free. ~ Merle Haggard

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, eating each day. ~ Pablo Neruda

In the end, I feel that one has to have a bit of neurosis to go on being an artist. A balanced human seldom produces art. It's that imbalance which impels us. I often think that all I want to do now is to avoid suicide, accidental or otherwise. Other than that, I think living on the edge is what drives my work and me beyond a certain point. The artist lives with anxiety. When you finally reach a plateau of achievement, there comes a new anxiety - the hunger to push on still further. That angst is what makes you go forward. ~ Beverly Pepper

The source of love, as I learned later, is a curiosity which, combined with the inclination which nature is obliged to give us in order to preserve itself. […] Hence women make no mistake in taking such pains over their person and their clothing, for it is only by these that they can arouse a curiosity to read them in those whom nature at their birth declared worthy of something better than blindness. […] As time goes on a man who has loved many women, all of them beautiful, reaches the point of feeling curious about ugly women if they are new to him. He sees a painted woman. The paint is obvious to him, but it does not put him off. His passion, which has become a vice, is ready with the fraudulent title page. 'It is quite possible,' he tells himself, 'that the book is not as bad as all that; indeed, it may have no need of this absurd artifice.' He decides to scan it, he tries to turn over the pages - but no! the living book objects; it insists on being read properly, and the 'egnomaniac' becomes a victim of coquetry, the monstrous persecutor of all men who ply the trade of love.

You, Sir, who are a man of intelligence and have read these least twenty lines, which Apollo drew from my pen, permit me to tell you that if they fail to disillusion you, you are lost - that is, you will be the victim of the fair sex to the last moment of your life. If that prospect pleases you, I congratulate you ~ Giacomo Casanova

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass. ~ Jim Harrison

Just concentrate on being in the moment", he said. "Don't read into things. See what's really there ok? ~ Jennifer Brown

People who expect the world to end very soon, and are planning on being raptured out of it, are not likely to be concerned about dominion over the earth, nor the application of God's law to the whole of life. Moreover, if such people believe, as they do, that Satan rules the world, they will regard their responsibilities to the world as negligible, and the world as something to escape from. ~ Rousas John Rushdoony

Marketing isn't sleazy car salesman tactics.
Marketing isn't tricking people into buying.
Marketing isn't unethical.
Marketing isn't intrusive self-promotion.
Marketing is two things: (1) creating lasting connections with people, through (2) a focus on being relentlessly helpful. ~ Tim Grahl

I pride myself on being a jerk, because I'm brutally honest all the time. ~ CM Punk

I really wasn't planning on being a solo artist. ~ Juicy J

There is no sadness and no cruelty in that gaze; it is a gaze without adjectives, it is only, completely, a gaze which neither judges you nor appeals to you; it posits you, implicates you; makes you exist. But this creative gesture is endless; you keep on being born, you are sustained, carried to the end of a movement which is one of infinite origin, source, and which appears in an eternal state of suspension. ~ Roland Barthes

Nature is behaving with us like that elderly rabbi to whom two men went in order to settle a dispute. Having listened to the first, the rabbi says: "You are in the right." The second insists on being heard. The rabbi listens to him and says: "You're also right." Having overheard from the next room, the rabbi's wife then calls out, "But they can't both be in the right!" The rabbi reflects and nods before concluding: "And you're right too." A ~ Carlo Rovelli

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment. ~ Nadia Boulanger

Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future. Understanding ~ Atul Gawande

I think that I need to work on being comfortable at being normal, everyday-ish on camera. ~ Christina Ricci

Differences of Opinion

1 HE TELLS HER

He tells her that the earth is flat --
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong,
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round. ~ Wendy Cope

We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind. ~ Ajahn Chah

You can learn to change the world or go on being changed by it. ~ Laurence Yep

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

If a man has a sense of identity that does not depend on being shored up by someone else, it cannot be eroded by someone else. If a woman has a sense of identity that does not depend on finding that identity in someone else, she cannot lose her identity in someone else. And so we return to the central fact: it is necessary to be. ~ Jo Coudert

Obviously there are positives to working in the epicenter of innovation. But there are also disadvantages. There is a groupthink mentality that goes on. Being based outside of Silicon Valley, you're not as subject to it. ~ Peter Barris

There is probably something good in every religion, the important thing is how you practice it. And this is when I found out that the most beautiful thing is to be able to live with a religion. Not just by displaying it and going to church and all, but by really being able to live some of these thoughts in your everyday life. This is a good thought. My problem right now is - and I just went to a Catholic service in connection with my daughter's something-or-another - and I got so damn annoyed by the fact that every text was about humility in relation to God. That's annoying, and I keep on being annoyed by it. Granted, the texts were written by people and not by God, but it's still so annoying. I don't see the meaning of you being humble just because you've been created by God and He has created all this. You can be humble toward life and toward other human beings and toward creativity and everything - and you are - but being humble toward the man who has created the whole circus? Of course, but you shouldn't have to prostrate yourself, and you do that in many religions - you crawl in the dust before these gods. Why? I can see why some king down here on earth might enjoy seeing people crawling before him, but if this guy is that great, then he shouldn't care whether I bow down before him or whether I play around with my dick at night - he shouldn't care a bit about anything like that. As long as I don't do anything that will harm his creation, as long as I don't kill, say, too ~ Lars Von Trier

On Being Old. It's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever. ~ J.P. Donleavy

You should focus on being more interested than interesting. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

I'm a shepherd, not a sheep, and I've always prided myself on being a leader and not a follower. ~ Dustin Diamond

I think Justin Timberlake verges on being gay, he gets gay airplay. Britney gets loads as well. If you're male and you're black you're not going to get much play in a gay club. ~ Andy Bell

A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. ~ Lionel Shriver

When I do something dorky, I blame it on being homeschooled. When I do something brilliant, I blame it on being homeschooled ~ Jamie Grace

I learned to focus on what's real rather than imagined; on not letting feelings drive the bus; on being courageous and honest; on putting my total effort into something and not worrying about the result. ~ Rob Lowe

They wrote to me and said something about it, and I said that if it doesn't involve any work, I'll do it.
(On being named Minnesota's first Poet Laureate) ~ Robert Bly

Today Lord I am going to do my best with Your help and for Your glory. I realize that there are many different people in the world with a variety of opinions and expectations. I will concentrate on being a God-pleaser and not a self-pleaser or man-pleaser. The rest I leave in Your hands lord. Grant me favor with You and with men and continue transforming me into the image of Your dear Son. Thank You Lord. ~ Joyce Meyer

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more
also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth. ~ Andrea Dworkin

My forte is the music. But obviously if ya don't keep up with the business, then your kinda doing it for nothing. So I do plan on being well off doing, maximizing what I do now. I heard Jimmy Kimmel describe being in your thirties in hip-hop is like the equivalent to being 300 yrs. old; almost like a dinosaur. ~ DJ Quik

The evangelical wing of the Church spends a lot of energy on being "born again" but little time on "growing up" again. There is a failing to encourage newborn believers out of the maternity ward and into a big world where they will spend the rest of their spiritual lives trying to find what they are looking for. ~ Steve Stockman

The annual celebrations of God's mercy, justice, and power, the feasts or fasts undertaken in praise of His Name, the miracles He was supposed to have thrown our way over the centuries - in my grandfather's mind, it was all nullified by the thing he had not yet learned to call the Holocaust. In Egypt, in Shushan, in the time of Judah Maccabee, God had intervened to deliver us with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; big deal. When we were sent to the ovens, God had sat with His outstretched thumb up His mighty ass and let us burn. In 1947 there was, to my grandfather, one reason to continue calling oneself a Jew, to go on being Jewish before the world: as a way of telling Hitler Fuck you. ~ Michael Chabon

Anger is unpleasant, for all concerned," John said. "We'd prefer not to have anything to do with it, but it is the expression of a force that insists on being heard and we need to heed what it is trying to say. ~ Alan McCluskey

Championship teams are built on being prepared, playing unselfishly and being held accountable ~ Jason Kidd

A writer hopes never to offend, but if he must, pray let him offend the gods before the reviewers. ~ Chila Woychik

I never planned on being a plumber. ~ Scott Caan