Top 100 Mcginley's Quotes
#1. Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime.
Jeffrey Kluger
#2. Freedom of speech is, to all Americans, as oxygen is to the human condition. It is a right that has been irreversibly programmed into our hard drive. We are free to speak our minds. An artist's right to express him or herself as best suits their art, is the artist's prerogative and it is guaranteed.
John C. McGinley
#3. I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.
Phyllis McGinley
#4. If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.
Phyllis McGinley
#5. In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.
Phyllis McGinley
#6. On 'Platoon' I was offered in 1984 a very tiny part that Ivan Kane would go on to play. Then the financing fell out, and the film was scuttled for two years.
John C. McGinley
#7. Oh, princes thrive on caviar, the poor on whey and curds, / And politicians, I infer, must eat their windy words. / It's crusts that feed the virtuous, it's cake that comforts sinners, / But writers live on bread and praise at Literary Dinners.
Phyllis McGinley
#8. The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer.
Phyllis McGinley
#9. Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.
Phyllis McGinley
#10. Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet.
Phyllis McGinley
#11. The saints differ from us in their exuberance, the excess of our human talents. Moderation is not their secret. It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions, that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will.
Phyllis McGinley
#13. It is the leisured, I have noticed, who rebel the most at an interruption of routine.
Phyllis McGinley
#14. TV tends to look for the living equivalents of squeaky-clean Kens and Barbies, but with my dial I'm more like Ken's dirty old uncle.
John C. McGinley
#15. I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse / And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house. / We've a fair-to-middlin' family; we take the middle view; / So we're manna sent from heaven to internal revenue.
Phyllis McGinley
#17. Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man s. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.
Phyllis McGinley
#18. The ability to forget a sorrow is childhood's most enchanting feature.
Phyllis McGinley
#19. I got the pilot for 'Scrubs' sent to me, and in the margin for Dr. Cox, it said 'a John McGinley type.' So when I went in to audition, I said to Billy Lawrence, who's a dear friend of mine, I said, 'Well, I'm John McGinley.'
John C. McGinley
#20. I feel bad for people who (don't have) faith because they don't have that blanket of comfort ... If I'm going out on stage, I always say a prayer right before I go out. Whatever it is. Before I take off on a plane. There's just always this connection ... God knows. I know. That's all I need.
Ted McGinley
#21. For the hearts of nurses are solid gold, / But their heels are flat and their hands are cold, / And their voices lilt with a lilt that's falser / Than the smile of an exhibition waltzer. / Yes, nurses can cure you, nurses restore you, / But nurses are bound that they do things for you.
Phyllis McGinley
#22. It's up to the captain. I certainly feel my golf is worthy of playing in the Ryder Cup. But I'm not sure I'm on the radar screen of Paul McGinley.
Bernhard Langer
#23. God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.
Phyllis McGinley
#24. I'm a homebody. If I'm not working I'm with my family being a dad.
John C. McGinley
#25. I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.'
Ryan McGinley
#26. Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy, Happy New Year everybody.
Phyllis McGinley
#27. I have no issue with being a character actor. If you've been around enough that people are able to segregate you into that category, it means you're working. So that's good!
John C. McGinley
#28. Happiness puts on as many shapes as discontent, and there is nothing odder than the satisfaction of one's neighbor.
Phyllis McGinley
#29. I'm interested in reaching the masses with my work. It's one of my goals.
Ryan McGinley
#30. As an actor, it's great to play a strong leader with a heart of gold.
John C. McGinley
#31. Say what you will, making a marriage work is a woman's business.
Phyllis McGinley
#32. Women are not men's equals in anything except responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races.
Phyllis McGinley
#33. A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
Phyllis McGinley
#34. Kanan is a big road through the Santa Monica Mountains. Between mid-March and mid-April, when you get over to the western side of the mountains, it's populated by Spanish broom - this beautiful, yellow, flowering weed that smells the way I imagine it smells along the Yellow Brick Road.
John C. McGinley
#35. Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.
Phyllis McGinley
#36. Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
Phyllis McGinley
#37. Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.
Phyllis McGinley
#38. The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else.
John C. McGinley
#39. Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind.
Phyllis McGinley
#40. Pressed for rules and verities, All i recolelct are these: Feed a cold and starve a fever. Argue with no true believer. Think-too-long is never-act. Scratch a myth and find a fact.
Phyllis McGinley
#41. Most of the e-mails I get nowadays are from students who ask me how I got my start. In truth it's from having a really supportive family but also having a good patron who will help you - like financing all those early trips I took.
Ryan McGinley
#42. I've always thought Ed Burns was a profoundly underrated actor. He's a great director, obviously. A great director/writer. But I think he's a stunning actor, too.
John C. McGinley
#43. The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it's a three-camera setup. There's a master and then there's two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don't re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening.
John C. McGinley
#44. There is satisfaction in seeing one's household prosper; in being both bountiful and provident.
Phyllis McGinley
#45. What's so interesting about 'Point Break' to me is that it's a study of testosterone and adrenaline by a woman. That's why it's little more interesting than it should be.
John C. McGinley
#46. Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.
Phyllis McGinley
#47. All my work, really, is based on my brothers and sisters. I had so many adventures with them and a big part of the work is to recreate those. It's easy for me to be around a lot of people, because I can retreat. I can watch everything.
Ryan McGinley
#48. The script comes first. If that isn't good enough, you know it's gonna be a long ride.
Ted McGinley
#49. Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.
Phyllis McGinley
#50. Tomorrow will come and today will pass, / But the hearts of the young are brittle as glass.
Phyllis McGinley
#51. I felt (a) it was a great role and (b) I wanted to stay in town. I wanted to stop going to these four month and five month gigs up in Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver or down in Mexico. I wanted to be around my son, Max. This came along and I was like, 'I really want to play this guy!'
John C. McGinley
#52. Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such
as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association
the going will be hard indeed.
Phyllis McGinley
#53. Hollywood's all about, 'Let's make this easy: This is what you do, so you go over here in this group, and we're not gonna call you.'
Ted McGinley
#54. I am a father. My son's name is Max and my daughter's name is Billie Grace. Twelve years ago Max was born with Down Syndrome. His journey has been complicated by infantile seizures, sleep apnea, dietary challenges and now, puberty!
John C. McGinley
#55. The TV and the public pay our wages and they like to see professional golfers mess it up. Missing a green with a chip shot - when do you see that? It's great to see exciting golf like we had last week.
Paul McGinley
#57. I would love to have a photographic memory. It would come in handy with the rants I'm given on Scrubs ... often on short notice!
John C. McGinley
#58. Wherever conversation's flowing, / Why must I feel it falls on me / To keep things going?
Phyllis McGinley
#59. Dr. Cox mentors the rookie doctors with a spoonful of dirt and then a cup of sugar. I see him as an archetypal descendent of two of my favorite curmudgeonly characters: Lou Grant and Louie De Palma.
John C. McGinley
#60. The idea for actors is to make a living telling stories, so if you can do that, then you're way ahead of the game.
John C. McGinley
#62. Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.
Phyllis McGinley
#64. History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art ...
Phyllis McGinley
#65. You know, post-production is a bit of a grind to me. If I'm producing a film, I really ... I mean I like editing, but all the other crap, the color mixing and ... it's all a grind. And so as a result I cut back producing the number of films I was producing.
John C. McGinley
#66. Shunning the upstart shower, / The cold and cursory scrub, / I celebrate the power / That lies within the Tub.
Phyllis McGinley
#67. Passion has determined our past. Attitude will determine our future.
Paul McGinley
#68. I sing Connecticut, her charms / Of rivers, orchards, blossoming ridges. / I sing her gardens, fences, farms, / Spiders and midges.
Phyllis McGinley
#69. Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.
Phyllis McGinley
#70. The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.
Phyllis McGinley
#71. I always wanted to be Gene Hackman and I always wanted to be, you know ... I wanted to be one of these guys. I always wanted to be Bob Duvall.
John C. McGinley
#72. I got my Equity card from an audition out of Backstage. We did 'Guys and Dolls' and 'Kismet.'
John C. McGinley
#73. Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.
Phyllis McGinley
#75. Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
Phyllis McGinley
#76. My son walked up to Nicole on the beach and I was throwing the ball for the dogs in the ocean. I was like, 'Max, you get the dogs. I'll talk to the hot blondes.'
John C. McGinley
#77. The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.
Phyllis McGinley
#78. A lover would find life less broken apart after a misguided love affair if they could feel that they had been sinful rather than foolish.
Phyllis McGinley
#79. I've been attracted to Kate Moss since I was a teenager.
Ryan McGinley
#80. I don't know why, but I'm an easy target. And I don't do anything to dispel it.
Ted McGinley
#82. Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.
Phyllis McGinley
#84. Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.
Phyllis McGinley
#85. It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.
Ryan McGinley
#86. I just can't afford to get bored, because if you've been blessed with a generous imagination, which a lot of actors have, to be engaged, to be stimulated, is to liberate your imagination.
John C. McGinley
#87. For little boys are rancorous
When robbed of any myth,
And spiteful and cantankerous
To all their kin and kith.
But little girls can draw conclusions
And profit from their lost illusions.
Phyllis McGinley
#88. The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.
Phyllis McGinley
#89. I did an episode of 'Frasier' with my friend Kelsey Grammer once.
John C. McGinley
#90. Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat ...
Phyllis McGinley
#91. The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.
Phyllis McGinley
#92. Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations ...
Phyllis McGinley
#93. I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.
Ryan McGinley
#94. Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.
Phyllis McGinley
#95. Let others, worn with living / And living's aftermath, / Take Sleep to heal the heart's distress, / Take Love to be their comfortress, / Take Song or Food or Fancy Dress, / But I shall take a Bath.
Phyllis McGinley
#96. Ah! some love Paris, / And some Purdue. / But love is an archer with a low I.Q. / A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. / So I'm in love with / New York City.
Phyllis McGinley
#97. I knew I wanted to play 'Dr Cox' really bad, which is always a huge mistake because as soon as you want something really bad, maybe you rip up a little bit.
John C. McGinley
#98. My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn't exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.
Ryan McGinley
#99. Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.
Phyllis McGinley
#100. Marriage is a lot of things-an alliance, a sacrament, a comedy, or a mistake; but it is definitely not a partnership because that implies equal gain. And every right-thinking woman knows the profit in matrimony is by all odds hers.
Phyllis McGinley
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