Top 100 Don't Tell Them Quotes
#1. Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
Alan Furst
#2. if you want to convince children of the power of books, don't tell them stories are good. Tell them a good story.
Roger Sutton
#3. I wouldn't say I'm a very controlling person. For instance, when I talk to the actors, I don't tell them exactly what I want because I want them to surprise me. I even encourage them to change some of the verses of the script if they need to.
Alejandro Amenabar
#4. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don't tell them they aren't. Sit with them and have a drink.
Lemony Snicket
#5. Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything.
Hunter S. Thompson
#6. If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.
Mark Twain
#7. Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Mark Twain
#8. Don't tell them he's upstairs , I commanded my brain. Tell them he moved to Pacoima to start a commune for vegetarian vampires. Tell them he's looking into getting a sex-change operation and renaming himself Lulu Pleshette.
Molly Harper
#9. What makes you think children like childish things? Don't tell them how to be children. They want to grow up.
M.B. Goffstein
#10. Other people - they practice and they practice ... these fingers of mine, they got brains in 'em. You don't tell them what to do - they do it. God given talent.
Jerry Lee Lewis
#11. If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone.
Julian Bond
#12. When you meet silent and inscrutable people, don't tell them what you are thinking. When you meet irritable and self-serving people, be careful what you say.
Zicheng Hong
#13. Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.
David Ogilvy
#14. And they must work out a lot. Nice butts. I mean before they went all furry. But don't tell them I said that
Karen Lynch
#15. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.
Maurice Sendak
#17. In my community everyone seems to listen or have an interest in what I have to say, what I'm wearing, or what I'm doing. They just follow what I do, I don't tell them to. I just try to lead by example.
Fashawn
#18. I believe that we don't choose our stories," she began, leaning forward. "Our stories choose us." She paused and took a sip of water. Her hand, I noticed was steady.. "And if we don't tell them, then we are somehow diminished.
Dani Shapiro
#19. When I do a cooking class now, I tell people that the most important part is to read the recipe many times so you know what you're doing. What I don't tell them, though, is that sometimes I do parties where I'm rushing so much I don't have time to follow my own advice.
Wolfgang Puck
#20. I need to say to you. There are things in your life that only you will see, stories that only you will hear. If you don't tell them or write them down, if you don't make the picture, these things will not be seen, these things will not be heard.
Emmet Gowin
#21. The number one thing in my opinion parents can do is be the way you would like your child to be. Don't tell them one thing and do something different. Be congruent with what you would like them to be by showing them how to be that way.
John Assaraf
#22. I don't want to make people mad. I just ... well, how can people get better if you don't tell them what you honestly think?
Brandon Sanderson
#23. Give people enough guidance to make the decisions you want them to make. Don't tell them what to do, but encourage them to do what is best.
Jimmy Johnson
#24. I have tales to tell, but I don't tell them. Discretion. Discretion.
Gregory Peck
#25. If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.
Markus Zusak
#26. Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries."
I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the
Lord's work and all.
James Patterson
#27. People need stories. Stories of love, hope, survival, wisdom and sometimes pain. Maybe you don't tell them the full truth; maybe you tell them lies. But what is this world? A lie in itself.
Savi Sharma
#28. Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.
Jack Kerouac
#29. Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.
Nina Simone
#30. It's totally different. I usually don't tell people about the Pleased if they know me from the harp. And if they are there to see the Pleased, I usually don't tell them about the harp. I am nervous that these people will expect something similar.
Joanna Newsom
#31. Don't tell them you're not a Marxist, darling, we saw Duck Soup together at the Rialto just last week.
Pansy Schneider-Horst
#32. I don't like Paris so much, and it's only eight shows. I mean, don't tell them that, of course. But everyone always thinks they're so important. And I'm sure they are. But to me, my happiness is more important.
Gisele Bundchen
#33. You have to be very careful when you give to others that you don't tell them how great you are rather than how much you value them.
Merle Shain
#34. One of the biggest complaints readers have about my work is that I don't tell them often enough what they can do. I do think this is an area where journalism sometimes falls short. We describe a really grim situation but don't really explain to people what they can do about it.
Nicholas Kristof
#36. Making music is like being the president: You can't tell people you're going to make health care free to get them behind you, but when you get that role, you don't do it.
Tyga
#37. But you can't feel bad every second, I wanted to tell her. Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.
Ransom Riggs
#38. You done decided you want to go to the dance yet Brenda?" "Didn't I tell you that dances was lame?" "What's lame about them?" "I like mature niggas." "I'm not a nigga." "What are you?" "An African American." "Well I don't like African Americans. I like niggas.
Vincent Morris
#39. Don't share your secrets if you preface them with 'just don't tell anybody.
Igor Babailov
#40. I'm a Republican. I don't want to go to heaven and have to face my family up there and tell them I voted for a Democrat.
T. Boone Pickens
#41. There is always room at the top, don't let them tell you there is not.
Adam Ant
#42. I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
Eric Schmidt
#43. I just let the songs tell me what to do - they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don't judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.
Valerie June
#44. If you don't tell people your plans they can't follow along." "They don't follow along anyway," Tyler said. "Most of them do their level best to piss in your well just to piss in your well.
John Ringo
#45. This was how to help a family who has just lost their child. Wash the clothes, make soup. Don't ask them what they need, bring them what they need. Keep them warm. Listen to them rant, and cry, and tell their story over and over.
Ann Hood
#46. You can tell them to run all you want but there aren't a lot of people that will, until they believe they're in major danger - which is usually too late. They gape like cows, and if you don't know it, cows gape a lot.
Karen Marie Moning
#47. I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don't know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn't even tell you what they are, or if they're good. I just assume they weren't.
Anthony Jeselnik
#48. I tell them that if compulsive eating is anything, it's a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard. When we don't want to notice what is going on. Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be.
Geneen Roth
#49. Americans are always mortified when I tell them this, but in England, it's a tradition to put your plaques and photographs and awards and gold records and stuff in your bathroom. I don't know why.
Adele
#50. My mother used to tell me: "You gotta smile more. Because if you don't smile, the way you look at people, they'll think you're mad at them."
Denzel Washington
#51. If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.
Richard Dawkins
#52. Teacher: Tell me a way to prevent a disease caused by biting insects. Student: Don't get bitten by them! ***
Various
#53. In the beginning of a movie, they don't tell you what's going to happen. You just have to wait and go on the adventure with them
Katie Douglas
#54. People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.
Emma Forrest
#55. I kind of wanted to tell them that. Like, it's okay, I know I'm weird-looking, take a look, I don't bite. Hey, the truth is, if a Wookiee started going to the school all of a sudden, I'd be curious, I'd probably stare a bit!
R.J. Palacio
#56. The thing is, you don't get to know. It's not like you wake up with a bad feeling in your stomach. You don't see shadows where there shouldn't be any. You don't remember to tell your parents you love them or
in my case
remember to say good-bye to them at all.
Lauren Oliver
#57. Tell them it's a secret. Tell them they don't need to know.
Tove Jansson
#58. But a funny thing happens when you tell a man that you don't want to get married: they don't believe you. They think you're lying to yourself or to them or you're trying to trick them in some way and you end up being made to feel worse for just telling the truth.
Jami Attenberg
#59. Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden
a secret language.
Robert Altman
#60. My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of the way in which human beings are shaped by things that they don't see.'
Sam Richards
#61. They want to know
who I write these poems for.
Tell them it's for all lovers
because I don't see a difference
between our love
and their love.
Kamand Kojouri
#62. Don't be afraid of the dark, Cas. But don't let them tell you that everything that's there in the dark is also there in
the light. It isn't.
Kendare Blake
#63. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. It's funny - people ask me that, and I don't know what to tell them.
Mackenzie Rosman
#64. People in this country, always worrying about how to eat, they pay someone good money to tell them: Eat this, don't eat that. If you don't know how to eat, what else can you know how to do in this world?
Imbolo Mbue
#65. If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
Madeleine L'Engle
#66. Be real. Make connections with people. Look them in the eye. Tell them how you feel. Don't be afraid to say what you mean. When you let go of the stuff you hold inside, you'll be amazed at what comes back to you.
Rachael Ray
#67. In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra.
Mira Nair
#68. Culture. [...] That most people don't do what we tell them to do. They do what they can get away with.
Fredrik Backman
#69. People will tell you what to do. Don't listen them. Do what is right and what you love. Ultimately they would have to agree with you. Be a trend setter
Laksh Kishore
#70. If you tell someone you're divorced they don't even blink, but tell them you've never been married and they wonder what's wrong with you.
Stephanie Bond
#71. I don't want to tell a 15 or 14 year old what they should be doing. I want them to tell me. And that's what I got when I met Justin Bieber for the first time.
Simon Cowell
#72. Hold on to the ones you love,' Grandpa Joe told him now. 'Hold on to them tightly and tell them that you love them at every opportunity because you just don't know when you'll be parted from them.
Victoria Connelly
#73. I know there are lots of regional accents in England, but I can't tell them apart and I'm not really aware of class. I don't pay any attention to those boundaries. I'm a California girl.
Danielle De Niese
#74. You've got to treat people as equals, and make them feel like it's their company. I don't know if I've had any impact or helped persuade Frank [to sell Eastern]. But, I can tell you, there were many discussions on the subject.
Michael Milken
#75. I wish I would tell our audience that we don't hate them without sounding cheesy.
Kurt Cobain
#76. When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.
Peggy Noonan
#77. The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one-day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.
Paula Fox
#78. In Europe, even more so than in national politics, we have to follow the principle laid down by Martin Luther: Use language that the people will understand, but don't just tell them what they want to hear.
Jean-Claude Juncker
#79. Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#80. They [Marvel] don't tell you. You never know with them. They have their world, but they don't like to spoil anything, so nobody knows until it's set in stone. You don't know. I actually don't know what they have in store for Wilson Fisk, or my Wilson Fisk, I should say.
Vincent D'Onofrio
#81. What I've found in my life with our children is that often you can give them advice and tell them to eat the right things, stay in shape and wear sunscreen, and they don't really want to listen. But then they hear it from someone else, and they do listen.
Rick Pitino
#82. The thing about me that seems to puzzle people the most - people who know me, who believe what i tell them - is that I can write the most profound things without actually meaning them.
I can persuade people of things I don't believe myself,or (more usually) simply don't care about
K.J. Parker
#83. Some people are so special, so beautiful and have so much to offer this world. Sad thing is they just don't see it. They need positive reinforcement. Tell them, 'If you could see only half of what I see in you, then one day you'd realize how truly amazing you really are.
Marc Mero
#84. You be as angry as you need to be," she said. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.
Patrick Ness
#85. Theologian Stephen Crites says sacred stories are like dwelling places - like booths or tabernacles. We don't tell these stories as much as we inhabit them.
Sarah Arthur
#86. If you really care about Charlotte, don't be afraid to tell her. Believe me, it will hurt her a lot more not hearing the words than it will hurt you to say them.
J.S. Goldstine
#87. Don't let anyone tell you that Apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now. Those roots run deep and tangled and we'll be tripping over them for many generations to come.
Lauren Beukes
#88. I'm tired of people disturbing the peace, getting on the radio and sounding a hot mess. If I can tell what the note really is, why let them go to the note they think it is? I've got that mama vibe. I don't look at it with an ego.
Betty Wright
#89. So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.
Michael Thomas Ford
#90. Life is too damn short to not tell someone how you feel. Don't let someone because you're afraid or you'll lose them forever.
Benjamin Bayani
#91. Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person.
Brenna Yovanoff
#92. I tell them how it is, give them a good time and then the cab fare home. Thank you, good night. Don't call me, 'cause I sure as shit won't be calling you.
Emma Chase
#93. We're not a political band. We don't want to tell people what to do or what to think. We just want to tell them to think.
Billie Joe Armstrong
#94. World is full of people so troubled they don't even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can't tell you what they don't know.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
#95. You don't have to tell me good things about your mother," he added. "I already know them."
"Do you?"
He shrugged slightly. "She raised you, didn't she?
Cassandra Clare
#96. Nobody can tell you to do things a way that you don't want to do them. Nobody can say really what's right or what's wrong. It's like some people don't feed their children meat. Some people do. It's a crazy world.
Kate Hudson
#97. If you go around the kitchen and ask my employees what they want to be doing in three to five years, most of them, if they're being honest, will tell you that they don't want to be working for me. They want to have their own place. And I think that's great.
Charlie Trotter
#98. When people tell me that I became President on January 20th, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don't become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.
Ronald Reagan
#99. Oh, you don't want to hear all my sad stories. I can't even bear to tell them anymore. Screw the past, right?
Gabrielle Zevin
#100. Don't let your idea of God be limited to the imagination of others. Don't let them define your God and don't let them tell you how to express your faith.
Steve Maraboli
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