Top 100 They Told Me Quotes
#1. Identifying, they said, was trying to see how I was like the people I was with. Comparing, they told me, was looking for differences, usually seeing how I was better than others.
Alcoholics Anonymous
#2. I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest, but when they told me I could never have sex, not even on my birthday, I changed my mind.
Johnny Vegas
#3. I auditioned for 'American Idol' at 17. They told me, 'No.'
Amber Riley
#4. They told me that to make her fall in love I had to make her laugh. But everytime she laughs I'm the one who falls in love
Bob Marley
#5. When they told me I needed a mastectomy, I thought of the thousands of luncheons and dinners I had attended where they slapped a name tag on my left bosom. I always smiled and said, 'Now, what shall we name the other one?' That would no longer be a problem.
Erma Bombeck
#6. At my second record label, they told me and other female artists that some of us were going on the chopping block. I was 19 ... and it was devastating.
Katy Perry
#7. We're all in this together. I learned that lesson growing up in West Philly. When I shoveled the sidewalk my parents didn't let me stop with our house. They told me to keep shoveling all the way to the corner. I had a responsibility to my community.
Michael Nutter
#8. They told me to just "act like myself." When I said, "How do I do that?" they said to just have fun with it, but I'm not sure what they meant.
Steve Martin
#9. When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.'
Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
#10. I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated. They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.
Jim Carrey
#11. To reporters the day after his accession to the presidency, April 13, 1945: When they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.
Harry S. Truman
#12. They told me that Billy would never come back any more, and I stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right enough, every day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to me.
Kenneth Grahame
#13. When they told me that by the year 2100 women would rule the world, my reply was 'Still?'
Winston Churchill
#14. I tentatively attempted to make contact with the muscles in my body. They told me to leave them the fuck alone.
Richelle Mead
#15. When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody's perfect so I stopped practicing.
Steven Wright
#16. I let my eyes deceive me from the start, they told me I wanted her more than I wanted you. Guess my eyes were bigger than my heart.
Conway Twitty
#17. They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!
Tennessee Williams
#18. As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic.
Jesse L. Martin
#19. I was coming home from kindergarten - well they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I had been working in a factory for ten years. It's good for a kid to know how to make gloves.
Ellen DeGeneres
#20. When I started my company, many people said I shouldn't launch it as a retail concept because it was too big a risk. They told me to launch as a wholesaler to test the waters - because that was the traditional way.
Tory Burch
#21. They told me how men made laws that allowed them to discriminate, segregate, and incarcerate without due process. Men are still writing those same laws today. They might wrap them in a different flag, but we can see that swastika underneath.
Dan Skinner
#22. I don't think I would be a good actor! People enjoyed 'Dancing With the Stars' because I was myself, and every time they told me to say something, I would say my own words, so I don't think I could follow a script well!
Helio Castroneves
#23. Resolve says, 'I will.' The man says, 'I will climb this mountain. They told me it is too high, too far, too steep, too rocky, and too difficult. But it's my mountain. I will climb it. You will soon see me waving from the top or dead on the side from trying.'
Jim Rohn
#24. When I first got sick, they told me I had a year to live, and I was writing my memoir really fast. There were really weird things happening with my nervous system and my heart and stuff, and it didn't look like I was gonna make it, so I was writing really fast, and then I couldn't write anymore.
John Lurie
#25. They told me I wouldn't make 25. Then it was 35, then 45. These were my doctors speaking - they're all dead now.
George Best
#26. We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say "They told me to do it! It's their fault, not mine." The freedom, God help us, to say "I was only following orders."-World War Z
Max Brooks
#27. I wrote four novels under the name Amy Silver. The first one was commissioned, and I was given basically the whole plot and the characters. They told me what to do, and I went straight away and did it. After that, I continued, and I was coming up with more my own ideas, although they did steer me.
Paula Hawkins
#28. My parents won't let me have a motorcycle, but they give me all the guns I want. I asked them for a motorcycle last Christmas and they told me I'd only kill myself. They got me this twelve-gauge instead.
Scott Thompson
#29. They told me I've got writer's cramp. So is that better than the block?
Joyce Rachelle
#30. I usually go to Lush for hair products. I had no idea that this existed, but they have a shampoo rock, and it looks like a bar of soap, and I was tripping out when they told me it was a shampoo, so that's pretty sweet.
Christian Serratos
#31. My parents were angry, but they were relieved that I was in good condition. They had been afraid the Russians would torture me. They told me not to do it again!
Mathias Rust
#32. I wanted to join the Army the sign said 'Be All That You Can Be', they told me it wasn't enough.
Jay London
#33. They told me I gave the best milk mustache of anybody.
Yasmine Bleeth
#34. As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone.
Bipasha Basu
#35. They told me it was impossible so I tried and failed. Then I tried again and again until I made it possible.
Debasish Mridha
#36. Excuse me? Does anyoone know where I can find a Mr. and Mrs. Froste? They told me to meet them here this afternoon. Apparently they want to discuss a job. Something that could 'really make history'. Their words.
- Arin
Matt De La Pena
#37. I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.
Grace Hopper
#38. When they told me I couldn't sit on the Senate floor with an iPad - that the technology wasn't even permitted - I breathed deep and knew that I was going to have to start pushing.
Cory Booker
#39. I know I'm not perfect, but I didn't think it was fair that they told me one thing and wrote down another.
Jack Gantos
#40. I studied photography at Bard, but I just felt tired of it. Someone asked me to be in a video but didn't want to be in it, so they told me to make my own, and that seemed more fun to me.
Gia Coppola
#41. The first day I arrived, they told me to go home and get rid of that cold.
June Allyson
#42. My first impression when I made it through was 'Good, because I'm going to prove to you that I deserve to be here', because they told me that sometimes I lack confidence in my performance and sometimes I'm not as consistent as they'd like me to be.
Naima Adedapo
#43. I knew more about Texas than the Texans and when they told me I would find summer here I smiled knowingly.
Richard H. Davis
#44. Im pleased to say that in telling them, and especially my parents, they told me that they love me and they support me. And for young people out there, know that thats usually what the answer is.
Ian Thorpe
#45. I can't tell him that I didn't see him until they told me to look.
Ally Condie
#46. When I went to school, they told me literature was a rope I must use to climb out of the dark well of unknowing. Writers are the knots on the rope.
Jennifer Stone
#47. My parents always knew that I wanted to act, so it didn't really come as a big surprise. The only thing they told me was that I had to wait until I was 18 so I could get my education out of the way first.
Rumer Willis
#48. I didn't want to do 'Casino Royale' when they told me to audition. I said no. Then they sent me the script, and I thought it was actually very interesting - and I had no other work at the time.
Eva Green
#49. They told me I couldn't. That's why I did.
Unknown
#50. They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.
Colum McCann
#51. When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who'd lost children wrote to me. 'I lost one, too,' they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn't lost any children. I'm just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)
John Irving
#52. The first thing they gave me at 'Sports Illustrated' was a first-class air card. 'And oh, by the way, there's the petty cash drawer,' they told me. 'Take a few thousand dollars for expenses.'
Dan Jenkins
#53. My first sales assessment, they tell you your strong points, and they told me I was the emotional salesman, the one who could really connect with people by making them feel comfortable. Once someone told me that, I couldn't get past how manipulative it made me feel.
Katie Nolan
#54. When I went to college, as much as my parents emphasized academic achievement, they emphasized marriage even more. They told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a 'good man' before they are all taken.
Sheryl Sandberg
#55. The wood nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.
Rick Riordan
#57. It is not often one chooses a demon over an angel.
So they told me. But this demon was the only one who made me feel safe.
Heather Heffner
#58. You don't buy experience at the pharmacy. You acquire it through games over time. Every player must go through that, but when the federation hired me, they told me they wanted new players and young players who will prepare for the future.
Agustin Castillo
#59. A week before shooting, they told me, You don't have the part, yet. We're still trying to find a handicapped kid who can act. Either that or we break your legs.
Kieran Culkin
#60. And so I was doing that and starving and somebody said you should model and I ran when they told me how much money you could make and I did a television commercial the first job.
Sela Ward
#61. My parents were definitely on the incentive side of parenting. Like, they told me that my father had learned to read when he was three. So, of course, I thought I had to, too.
Chelsea Clinton
#62. FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They told me, now forgotten, just how many pictures of ships they took out of the White House after he died. But he could choose good men.
Stuart Symington
#63. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and They told me to do it! It's their fault, not mine.
Max Brooks
#64. Didn't I tell you not to touch the Lamborghini? (Kyrian) (Hunter groused an instant before he cut the wheel and sent the vampire flying through the air.) And they told me you guys couldn't fly. (Kyrian)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#65. It was easy to leave the art world after I found out that it was just another corporation. When they told me I had to create the same thing, I rebelled.
Betty Dodson
#66. When I went to London, they told me I spoke with a funny accent - English with a Chinese accent.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten
#67. I basically put myself into directors' hands and let them tell me what to do, and the more they told me what to do, the more I liked it.
Julie Christie
#68. Everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of "experts" who made them up in the first place.
John Lennon
#69. The more people told me that, you know, wow, you should be so blessed. Don't you feel blessed? And you have all this - mansion and all these beautiful things. And I said, you know - the more they told me that, the more depressed I got.
Tanya Tucker
#70. The record company really pissed me off when they told me to lose weight. I couldn't be bothered with looking a certain way. So I left the business. I don't regret it.
Kim Wilde
#71. The police stopped me when I was out in my car. They told me it was a spot check. I admitted to two pimples and a boil.
Chic Murray
#72. If you asked me how I felt when they told me I would marry Wen Fu, I can say only this: It was like being told I had won a big prize. And it was also like being told my head was going to be chopped off. Something between those two feelings.
Amy Tan
#73. They told me at the end of that test that they wanted me to be a part of this project. I walked out and had a moment of clarity where I thought, not many people will ever have this moment.
Wentworth Miller
#74. Dance,' they told me, and I stood still,
and while I stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
'Pray,' they said, and I laughed,
covering myself in the earth's brightnesses,
and then stole off gray into the midst of a revel,
and prayed like an orphan.
Wendell Berry
#75. My parents always told me, 'Do what you love because that is what you will do well in.' They told me to make sure that you are happy.
Dylan Lauren
#76. 'The bigtime for you is just around the corner.' They told me that first in 1952 - boy, it's been a long corner. If I don't hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I'm gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.
Ronnie Hawkins
#77. They told me I should be making my own records. So I figured, 'why not?
Dee Dee Warwick
#78. Starting out, they told me: 'You're a good-looking guy. We'll put you in this role, and you can be a conduit for the audience into this side of the story.' But I've grown up, and that's not what I want anymore. My concept of the job I do has evolved. And it is a job, nothing more.
Sam Worthington
#79. I played because I loved it. It was incredible when they told me they were going to sign me and they were going to give me money.
Hanley Ramirez
#80. When I went to a school in Japan, they told me that both the teachers and students perform cleaning tasks here to keep the schools clean. I wondered why can't we do it in India.
Narendra Modi
#81. They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.
John Amos
#83. They told me,Heraclitus,they told me
you are dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear
and bitter tears to shed ...
I wept when i remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking,and sent him down the sky.
Callimachus
#84. When I started, I was told that, for all intents and purposes, I was playing a human, which made it easier. Until they told me, 'Grace, you're a Cylon, she wouldn't do that.' And later, I learned that Cylons are actually more human than humans. This has been an ongoing exploration.
Grace Park
#85. In the last 'Batman' movie, they told me that I couldn't get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren't 'going urban.' It was like, 'What does that have to do with anything?'
Zoe Kravitz
#86. When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth ... It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.
Joe Strummer
#87. Guys like Todd Bridges never overcame being a child star. You can't have any big failures. I've always felt regular. I played organized ball at the rec league. At 13, they told me I sold 3 million copies. I didn't know what that meant.
Bow Wow
#88. The little grey cells, my friend, the little grey cells! They told me.
Agatha Christie
#89. They told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program as an advance way of keeping the club going. I'll never make the mistake of being seventy again.
Casey Stengel
#90. I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me underpriviledged was overused, I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime, but I have a great vocabulary.
Jules Feiffer
#91. Yeah,there was a whole chapter on you in my eight grade History of Angels textbook," Miles said. Arriane clapped. "And they told me that book was banned!
Lauren Kate
#92. I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.
Orson Scott Card
#93. They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
Black Elk
#94. When I was a kid, I got really great advice from someone who is so important to me and someone who I respect so much, and they told me, 'Don't do too many endorsements. Don't throw your name on things; think of your longevity.'
Drew Barrymore
#95. There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay.
Zubin Mehta
#96. Marlon Brando was the absolute opposite of everything they told me he was going to be, which is that he was a testy guy who wants to know that he's in control of everything. But, that's not who Marlon was. No matter what he did, the most important thing on his mind was justice.
Johnny Depp
#97. I haven't had a single moment of terror since they told me [I was dying]. My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.
Dennis Potter
#98. My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.
John Lewis
#99. You know what, I'm a big, big fan of 'Heroes,' but the day they told me that the end of the world was coming, and that day didn't come, I stopped watching.
Enrico Colantoni
#100. They told me that, as a woman, I'd never get into graduate school in physics, so they got me a job as a secretary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and promised that, if I were a good girl, I would take courses there.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
