The Big Tiny Quotes

#1. The Grand Old Party's abiding affection for a 'bigger and better' presidency isn't entirely logical. After all, the Obama presidency commenced with an effort to reenact the Hundred Days. Yet President Obama's first-term economic performance itself was not 'big' but mediocre - tiny, even.

Amity Shlaes

#2. I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little ... We measure our performance in seconds.

William H. Macy

#3. The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

Dee Williams

#4. It's really the sense of isolation, more than anything, realizing how tiny you are down in this big vast black unknown and unexplored place,

James Cameron

#5. For me, the idea of living small has always involved being curious - taking a look at how my day-to-day is connected to the larger world around me, and to the delicate universe that sits between my ears and in my small body.

Dee Williams

#6. These days I find that I am happy enough in the same way that I am warm enough - the goal isn't bliss or even comfort in some cases. The goal is to feel alive.

Dee Williams

#7. You don't realize how small you really are until you're faced with something like that. We live our lives as if we're at the center of our own universe, but we're just tiny pieces of a shattered whole.

Cora Carmack

#8. I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers flexed inside this living body.

Dee Williams

#9. 'Cheers' was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly - I still think I got the part because of Shelley.

Ted Danson

#10. There are some moments you won't completely heal from, those rare ones you will take torn open to the grave but throughout all the big moments that shake you up there will be countless tiny experiences that help you laugh all over again.

Nikki Rowe

#11. The problem, he says, is not that you are asked to do one big, bad deed; it is that there are so many tiny steps along the way that there is never a moment when it's simple to say no.

Anonymous

#12. The thing inside him that was so tiny and so fucking big at the same time.

K.A. Mitchell

#13. Puget Sound Community School. Like Sudbury and Big Picture, this tiny independent school in Seattle, Washington, gives its students a radical dose of autonomy, turning the "one size fits all" approach of conventional schools on its head.

Daniel H. Pink

#14. You will always be a puppet on someone else's line if you don't care enough about the big picture to let your tiny voice be heard. When it is combined with the tiny voices of millions of others that is the real power.

Kenneth Eade

#15. I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.

Dee Williams

#16. Friend, we're traveling together.
Throw off your tiredness. Let me show you
one tiny spot of the beauty that cannot be spoken.
I'm like an ant that's gotten into the granary, ludicrously happy, and trying to lug out
a grain that's way too big.

Rumi

#17. Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn't always liberate you. Instead it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up - it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions.

Dee Williams

#18. I know you engineer types are excellent with mathematics, much better than I ever will be, but I do know the difference between a tiny pail of coins and big bucket of dollars. How can I take the pail when I am worth the bucket?

Ken Goldstein

#19. Get outside. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel big or tiny? Because there's something good about feeling both.

Amy Grant

#20. Sometimes the word 'gratitude' feels too thin to explain things.

Dee Williams

#21. You could go out with a camcorder tomorrow and make a movie with virtually no money, but promoting a tiny low-budget movie costs $20 million. And the money they spend on the big movies is astronomical.

Amy Heckerling

#22. Ultimately, I hoped the tiny-house guy was similar to me: a sane person without a big agenda, who simply wanted a way to make sense of the world, to create a new map with a big X in the middle labeled "Home," even if that meant shrinking his world down to the size of an area rug.

Dee Williams

#23. I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.

Marina Abramovic

#24. I like big drinks that aren't afraid of the alcohol in them. Not big in size, but in flavor, and the way I can allow myself to enjoy them is by making them in very small quantities. I make tiny glasses of very big drinks.

Rachel Maddow

#25. Fear and logic belong together.

Dee Williams

#26. Changing the world doesn't happen all at once. It isn't a big bang. It's an evolution, the sum of a billion tiny sparks. And some of those sparks will have to come from you.

Katie Couric

#27. A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.

Cynthia Kenyon

#28. All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.

Terry Pratchett

#29. It is really hurting; how big media plagiarize everyday and no one judges them; The real heroes are those tiny and small self-funded websites and blogs that provide all primary data for them to survive and it will continue as far they exist

M.F. Moonzajer

#30. Tiny parasites inside you, big parasites outside you, people living from your work even though they stay on the other side of the world, making you do it by the force of laws and guns. Laws like mistletoe!

Kim Stanley Robinson

#31. I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I'd fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be my house.

Dee Williams

#32. I have noticed that most times, the least that you give out is the best that someone really needs. So, don't always wait till you have something big to give before you do so! Someone's "big" is your "little"!

Israelmore Ayivor

#33. The guns of the big events rumble through our pages, but the tiny firecrackers are constantly hissing and popping there as well; it appears that much of my life as a journalist has been devoted to sedulously setting off firecrackers.

Brendan Gill

#34. Health and happiness improvements can be made by making tiny little adjustments over time. They don't need to be massive big shifts especially if they are unlikely to stay, and you don't have to wait for the start of a new year, new month, new week or even new day to make the change.

Julie Creffield

#35. I was thinking this was a great teaching moment, where they'd finally come to see that even something teeny-tiny can be big enough.

Dee Williams

#36. She was surprised at how tiny the school seemed now. She supposed it was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.

Betty Smith

#37. The only things I could kill with ease were bugs and even then only the tiny ones the big ones crunched too much and made me feel all guilty and icked out.

Jennifer Estep

#38. Change what you can, darlin'. That's my best advice.

Dee Williams

#39. Embrace the power of little things and you will build a tower of mighty things. Mighty things are made up varieties of little things put together!

Israelmore Ayivor

#40. I'm a big believer you should design work around a vast majority of people who want to do the right thing rather than around the tiny minority who might take advantage.

Gail Kelly

#41. I know all about love that's too big to stay in a tiny bucket. Splashing out all over the place in the most embarrassing way possible.

Carol Rifka Brunt

#42. Your big picture will never be a masterpiece if you ignore the tiny brushstrokes. You're trying so hard to be successful that true success is eluding you.

Andy Andrews

#43. I didn't do anything but sit quietly and pay attention to the fact that my hollow chest was still beating. I was still alive and could see that the new normal wasn't so bad.

Dee Williams

#44. Every big castle was once started with a single block; despise no small beginnings. A little step taken every day builds up the hope of greater accomplishments. Do something every day!

Israelmore Ayivor

#45. Tiny: but there is the word, this word phil wrayson taught me once: weltschmerz. it's the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you.

David Levithan

#46. I had a very simple life growing up in the farm country outside of Perugia, and biscotti and warm milk with a tiny bit of coffee were a big part of my morning ritual before walking to school.

Brunello Cucinelli

#47. The New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn't as big as it looked.

Boy George

#48. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.

Sebastian Barry

#49. Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think.

David Attenborough

#50. We would see that each minute counts for something timeless and, if we want, we all can find our way inside these big, tiny moments." Beautiful!

Dee Williams

#51. When I was in high school I moved from the big city to a tiny village of 500 people in Vermont. It was like The Waltons!

Daphne Zuniga

#52. I sometimes think that perhaps our minds are too weak to grasp joy or sorrow except in small things ... In the big things joy and sorrow are just alike - overwhelming. At least, we only get them bit by bit, in tiny flashes - in waves - that our minds can't stand for very long. p 199

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#53. Letting go of "stuff" allowed the world to collapse behind me as I moved, so I became nothing more or less than who I simply was: Me.

Dee Williams

#54. Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected. Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn't looking down at a device in their hands? We've become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.

Regina Brett

#55. Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.

Norman Lear

#56. Funny . . . humanity's great at the tiny patterns. We can find quarks in an atom and Jesus's face in a tortilla. But that big picture is so elusive, so overwhelming, people refuse to believe something as obvious as their life in Des Moines affects lives in Delhi.

P.J. Manney

#57. God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

Bono

#58. The secret of big and revolutionary actions also consists in discovering the tiny step that is simultaneously a strategic step, insofar as it entails additional steps in the direction of a better reality.

Gustav Heinemann

#59. Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.
There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.

Dee Williams

#60. The irony of the media and people in big cities is that they're charged with defining the entire culture, when in reality they don't even live in that culture. They live in such a rarified, tiny world.

Meghan Daum

#61. The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming places.

Jeff Goins

#62. A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.

Steven Pressfield

#63. The phenomenon of the woman who's asked what movie she wants to see, and she says, "I don't know. What do you want to see?" It's a tiny version of a big tendency. Women need to say, "This is what I want."

Gloria Steinem

#64. I loved Le Taha'a private resort in Tahiti. It's accessible only by private boat or helicopter, and it sits on a tiny strip of land just big enough for one hotel. It's extraordinary and faces the Vanilla Island where Tahitians grow vanilla.

Marie Helvin

#65. When I mentioned my early morning waking to the old witch down the street, she explained that this is the time the "ceiling is the thinnest," the moment that the earth's creatures have the greatest access to the heavens... It is a magical time, or so she said.

Dee Williams

#66. The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.

Tony Hayward

#67. I wanted to say a lot but wasn't sure where to start; people don't want to hear about how your heart has melted into the dirt under your house.

Dee Williams

#68. It's the fashion, I tell you: big, tall women going out with tiny, tiny men.

Nicholas Haslam

#69. The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.

Greta Gerwig

#70. The homes I like the best are totally occupied, busy, and useful, whether it's a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way. So I prefer smaller spaces that are full of books, full of things that people are doing.

Martha Stewart

#71. Having drive is a big part of success, along with integrity. You need to have a clear vision of what you want and take the steps to achieve it, even if that sometimes means playing gigs in tiny clubs.

Vonda Shepard

#72. The things that are the hardest are the things that are due the quickest. The more time you have the easier it is to come up with things and navigate. I think the other things that are tough are films that are very, very subtle. Where there are little tiny nuances that make a big difference.

Christopher Lennertz

#73. To a poet, it's quite ruinous to have a poem distorted, out of shape, or squeezed, shall we say, into this tiny screen. But I'm not sure big digital companies are sensitive to the needs of poets.

Billy Collins

#74. Oddly, I found myself calmer than I'd been in a long while. Maybe it was simply because my muscles ached or maybe because I felt that nothing was more compelling than the stack of wood that was waiting in Camelli's garage.

Dee Williams

#75. I had spent time in New York, where I loved the idea that theater could be done up in tiny little rooms rather than for lots of money on a big stage, and be tied to ordinary life.

Garry Hynes

#76. I do not at all understand the mystery of grace
only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. I can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt.

Anne Lamott

#77. I want to remember warming your two a.m. bottle, clipping your locks, watching you be baptized, bathing you in the big porcelain sink ... how I often laid you against my chest and felt the cradlesong of your tiny breaths as you fell asleep ...

Carew Papritz

#78. Do not overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel.
Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain.

Gautama Buddha

#79. he had kidded with us that if we didn't let go at the proper moment, he would slap our hands with a stick, and we had all laughed because who would be silly enough to hang on when they should let go?

Dee Williams

#80. Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture.

Ed Wood

#81. It is usual that little streams put their mouths into big rivers. Most rivers can also be traced to the big sea. The fact that you start with a small choice does not mean you will be on that narrow road forever.

Israelmore Ayivor

#82. I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.

Pam Houston

#83. My high school wasn't a big public school; it was tiny. There were 36 girls in my graduating class. We were a big group of girls that by the time senior year came along couldn't wait to get away from school fast enough but we loved each other. It's really fun to see the girls at reunions now.

Cecily Von Ziegesar

#84. You've got these big studio films and these tiny independent films now. It's very much either/or. With the independent films, it's always a beautiful risk - it might never be seen. With the studio films, you're conforming to the formula of what's always been in place.

Imogen Poots

#85. For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.

Sarah Dessen

#86. The acting thing is so beyond my control. Acting isn't mine. You're like a tiny piece in this big, corporate mechanism that needs chemistry and divine intervention.

Sandra Bullock

#87. Learn from the ants- how a tiny heart is big enough to love, help and care about another living existence.

Munia Khan

#88. And that, quite simply, is the issue. We live in a finite world with finite resources. Although it may sometimes seem quite big, earth is really very small - a tiny blue and green oasis of life in a cold universe.

David Suzuki

#89. If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now.

Mildred H. McAfee

#90. The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings.

Dee Williams

#91. I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what "help" would really look like... I hadn't prepared myself for how humbled I'd feel, or how hard it would be to find my footing when witnessing a cycle of poverty that seemed to defy any sort of help.

Dee Williams

#92. I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a dump truck of manure delivered, a load that made the entire neighborhood smell like a dairy barn for weeks.

Dee Williams

#93. Give three hundred seconds to your dream. Take a tiny step with big integrity. It takes a step to break to break into a run. The result at hand doesn't matter. The resolve does. Show up for your love. Showing up always shines.

Tama J. Kieves

#94. The Internet is dumb. The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can't begin to map the complexity of our lives, or how we each affect others.

Dee Williams

#95. Babies have big heads and big eyes, and tiny little bodies with tiny little arms and legs. So did the aliens at Roswell! I rest my case.

William Shatner

#96. Being tall has a major impact in general. It takes some courage to be as big as you are - to live up to it and not be intimidated by the graceful tiny people.

Sigourney Weaver