Whit Stillman Quotes

You can't go by what the governments say or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred of Americans in Britain than in France. ~ Whit Stillman

Find someone hypersocial and crazy and try not to follow them to their doom, but to make friends with their nicer friends. ~ Whit Stillman

We bring these delightful creatures into the world - eagerly, happily - and then before long they are spying upon and judging us, rarely favourably. Having children is our fondest wish but, in doing so, we breed our acutest critics. It is a preposterous situation - but entirely of our own making. ~ Whit Stillman

I think crazy people are helpful, crazy people who are the catalysts who make other things happen for everyone else. It's almost as if they're not really making things happen in their own life, but their hyperactivity is triggered for everyone else. ~ Whit Stillman

I think it's helpful to aspire to make films if you feel that other people are not doing what you want to do. ~ Whit Stillman

There's a big difference between having relatives who have money and actually having it yourself. Just because you have a cousin who has a lot of money doesn't mean he shares it with you. Or that you'd ask him for a loan. ~ Whit Stillman

I think it's really good and helpful to have the people you most admire in some other discipline than what you work in. It's too intimidating and derivative to be just totally gobsmacked by someone doing exactly the same thing as you are. ~ Whit Stillman

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime. ~ Whit Stillman

I would say on the other side of the equation that there were really some massive sales and massive enthusiasm for some films that were given big releases. And I'm not really sure that happens in quite the same way, small films getting big releases. Maybe it still does, I don't know. ~ Whit Stillman

If he held me in true regard he would not believe such insinuations in my disfavour. A worthy lover should assume one has unanswerable motives for all one does!" "Certainly - ~ Whit Stillman

Sometimes you don't realize how dependent you are on just a few people, and if they disappear, suddenly you can be thrown on your own resources, which may be limited, and you're really in a fix. So I think that's authentic to the experience that it might be very lonely. ~ Whit Stillman

Charlie Black: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn't Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed.
Tom Townsend: That's debatable.
Charlie Black: Whether Brook Farm failed?
Tom Townsend: That it ceased to exist, I'll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said.
Charlie Black: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is - is failure. I mean, that's pretty definitive.
Tom Townsend: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn't mean everyone's a failure. ~ Whit Stillman

a favourite master, Mr. Grove, liked to say that if we learned to master the semi-colon we could expect to be successful in whatever path we chose in life. One ~ Whit Stillman

If an angel should fly from heaven and inform the saint personally of the Saviour's love to him, the evidence would not be one whit more satisfactory than that which is borne in the heart by the Holy Ghost. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For Berry, you just be there, Whit. Be the one person in the wide green world she doesn't have to explain it to, because you were there and saw it all for yourself. Hand her a clean cloth if she cries or bleeds, and some warm thing for the pain that doubles her over. The time to hold her will come. This day isn't over yet. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

That was what collaboration meant for Steve Woz: the ability to share a donut and a brainwave with his laid-back, nonjudgmental, poorly dressed colleagues - who minded not a whit when he disappeared into his cubicle to get the real work done. ~ Susan Cain

I wanted to think about ways to get an American readership concerned with what is happening in Mexico, but also to reframe it as a problem Americans share. ~ Sarah Stillman

Oh aye ... my Father would thrash me every now and then. He'd talk while he did it too! He'd hit me and shout, 'Have ye had enough?' Had enough? Whit kind of question is that? 'Why, Father, would another kick in the balls be out of the question???' ~ Billy Connolly

A boy and a girl, fated to rule all. Two will rise, and One will fall. ~ James Patterson

The knowledge annihilated his soul by relentless, insidious stages. Reality had turned on him. He could get no purchase on the universe. It moved onward, pitiless, caring not a whit. ~ David Bowles

Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks. And if you've read your Edith Hamilton or Jane Harrison - or the Old Testament, for that matter - you'll know that gods acted like men most of the time, or worse. ~ Greg Iles

For why is gambling a whit worse than any other method of acquiring money? How, for instance, is it worse than trade? True, out of a hundred persons, only one can win; yet what business is that of yours or of mine? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I luv the ded, this old baster sez to me when I wiz tryin to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah asks you whare the fukin Sleeping Byootie woz, no whit kind of humpin you lyke. ~ Iain Banks

Adlestrop
Yes, I remember Adlestrop
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop
only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
~ Edward Thomas

So tell me, Miss Fitt, do you know when your brother will return?"
"No." I wet my lips. "Do you know Elijah?"
He looked off to the right. "I know of your brother."
"Oh?"
"Of course." He folded his arms over his chest and returned his gaze to me. "Everyone knows of the Philadelphia Fitts.I even know of you."
"You mean Allison told you about me."
His lips twitched. "Certainly."
I stroked my amethysts and made my expression passive. I didn't care one whit about her gossip-though I did wish she wouldn't talk about me to Clarence. I'd prefer if eligible young men learned my faults after meeting me.
He flashed his eyebrows playfully, as if knowing where my thoughts had gone. "You needn't worry. She's said nothing unkind. She finds you amusing-she likes to talk, you know?"
"I hadn't noticed," I said flatly. Saying Allison loved to gossip was like saying birds enjoyed flying. It was not so much a hobby as part of her physiology.
Clarence's smile expanded, and his eyes crinkled. "Apparently there was an insult you gave her a few days ago, though...She had to ask me what it meant."
My face warmed, and I looked away. "I believe I might have called her a spoiled Portia with no concept of mercy."
He laughed and hit his knee. "That's right. Portia's speech on mercy in the final act of The Merchant of Venice. Allie had no idea what you meant."
"In my defense, she was taunting me-"
"With no mercy?"
"Something like tha ~ Susan Dennard

There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street. ~ Annie Dillard

For my boyhood's friend hath fallen, the pillar of my trust,
The true, the wise, the beautiful, is sleeping in the dust. ~ George Stillman Hillard

If in the place of God we write "Reality", "Nature", "Unknowable", or "Zero", it matters not one whit; the equation is just as obscure; for all we have done is to replace a by b, c, d, or e, not knowing what these letters mean. The symbol has changed, but what it symbolizes remains as inscrutable. ~ J. F. C. Fuller

When everyone's focused on the conventional parts of war - doing infantry imbeds or chasing IEDs - you look at the thing that seems not that interesting to people, like the circumstances of logistics workers cooking the troops' food or cleaning their latrines. ~ Sarah Stillman

Peer pressure!'
'Alvin son, you are the only virgin we know...'
'Nae mingers for me,' I emote, waving a Shakespearean finger. 'When this shagger starts, it will be with the finest creation on God's earth'
'Tyra's probably gettin a ride at the back of the Maniqui right now,' Frankie mutters, 'Brian's probably fuckin shagged her already!'
Brian turns to him, snappily. 'Whit ye tryin to say?'
'Brian, you cannae get it up unless yer surrounded by bin-bags ~ Alan Bissett

It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time but that it is too late for us. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no whit less enlightnment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. ~ Annie Dillard

Ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportioned to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy. ~ George Stillman Hillard

Frankly, Pedro Almodóvar's recent box office hit, Volver, is the first movie I've seen in which a young woman's retaliation against sexual violence doesn't ultimately boomerang around to destroy her ~ Sarah Stillman

I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know that I would want to do investigative reporting - in part because it seemed so ill-suited for my personality, or I thought it was ill-suited for my personality, insofar as I'm not very aggressive, and I'm not confrontational. ~ Sarah Stillman

If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad as the people who think they see them. Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and hd perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is tragic
what people do
just to be accepted.

I once met an angel
who cut off her wings
and chose to walk
whit all the petty humans.
My heart laments for the world,
because what a sight
it would be to behold,
watching her hazy silhouette
gently flying
into the crimson sunset skies. ~ Yash Pandit

Hey, Effie, watch this!" says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean whit his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, "We miss you, Effie! ~ Suzanne Collins

Ginny who lived her life with hair in the breeze, Stillman who lived his with it under his hat. And he loved her so much the worse for it. ~ Josh Weil

Often, I'm spending months with a person in a very intimate context, getting to know the ins and outs of what they ate for breakfast, not to mention dredging up the most traumatic experiences of their lives, digging through their documents and photographs from difficult times, all of that. And that process, I think, can be extraordinarily strange for subjects who've never been interviewed before, especially if you don't acquaint them from the get-go with what you're trying to do, what it entails, and why you care. ~ Sarah Stillman

Son, it's easy tae be guid oan a fu' belly. It's when a man's goat two bites an' wan o' them he'll share, ye ken whit he's made o'. Listen. In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it's like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattom. The rest can a' kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas. We canny, son. We loass the wan idea o' who we are, we're deid. We're wan anither. Tae survive, we'll respect wan anither. When the time comes, we'll a' move forward thegither, or nut at all. ~ William McIlvanney

It is suspected, by some, that spiritual beings are extremely jealous of the natural world because they are nothing more than a figment of the imagination. This might explain their compulsive and obsessive behavior in trying to convince others they are real, and that the natural world is an illusion. The end of the world scenarios they conjure up reveal their Napoleon whit and superiority complex. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons - but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world - a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring - this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else - but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre pe ~ Carson McCullers

No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being. ~ John Ruskin

Listen to me, Whit. Don't ever struggle so hard trying to come up with something to say that you don't say anything. That's the real crime because you're never, ever guaranteed another chance. As long as you say something, they'll know exactly how you feel. ~ Laurel Ulen Curtis

Success is waking up in the morning and bounding out of bed because there's something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you're good at - something that's bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again. ~ Whit Hobbs

A sluggish, dawdling, and dilatory man may have spasms of activity, but he never acts continuously and consecutively with energetic quickness. ~ George Stillman Hillard

Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. ~ George Stillman Hillard

One thing I've discovered is that I never think of something that didn't work out as just "something that didn't work out." I think so often with investigative work, things that initially look like failures wind up leading to your biggest stories. ~ Sarah Stillman

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius. ~ George Stillman Hillard

What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you - -poor, sick, old ere your time - -
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride. ~ Robert Browning

Whit looks like an angel when she sleeps. She's all sweet, full lips, long, curly eyelashes, and a tumble of sleek, dark hair against the pillow.
She also kicks like a mule, snores like a bear, sweats like a hog, and steals the covers like a fat, menacing caterpillar about to cocoon herself before her metamorphosis. - Deo ~ Liz Reinhardt

Raised in the Episcopal church, I was once removed from my pew, at age six, because I could not control my weeping. Unbeknownst to anyone, I had been staring at a terrible, glorious stained-glass window of the crucifixion and grieving for the pain Christ must have endured. The arresting mosaic of that forlorn image etched itself indelibly upon me. And yet at some point, I became emotionally and empathically detached. ~ William Stillman

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder. ~ Albert Einstein

let us keep to the way which Nature has mapped out for us, and let us not swerve therefrom. If we follow Nature, all is easy and unobstructed; but if we combat Nature, our life differs not a whit from that of men who row against the current. ~ Seneca.

It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.

Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and prep ~ Charles Dickens

It may be too much to expect that nations should be governed in their relations towards each other by the precepts of Christian morality, but surely it is not too much to ask that they should conform to the code of courtesy and good breeding recognized among gentlemen in the intercourse of social life. ~ George Stillman Hillard

Sara suddenly had celebrity. Funny thing was, the sun didn't rise any later. The cow didn't milk herself, the weeds didn't stop growing, the tub of wash water didn't get any lighter, and corn bread didn't miraculously appear on plates every night. Day to day, Sara's life didn't change one whit. At least not right away. ~ Mark Zwonitzer

The best style is the least noticeable. ~ Whit Burnett

Too often she had listened to her father discourse on the necessity for peace and consideration of others. She believed in that policy wholeheartedly. The fact that occasionally violence was necessary did not alter her convictions one whit. No system of philosophy or ethics, no growth of goverenment, no improvement in living came without trial and struggle. Struggle, she had often heard her father say, was the law of growth. Without giving too much thought to it, she understood that such men as Rafe Caradec, Trigger Boyne, Tex Brisco and others of their ilk were needed. For all their violence, their occasional heedlessness and their desire to go their own way, they were building a new world in a rough and violent land where everything tended to extremes. Mountains were high, the praires wide, the streams roaring, the buffalo by the thousand, and tens of thousand. It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes. ~ Louis L'Amour

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit. ~ Hilaire Belloc