Was They Quotes

#1. The whole system was based upon getting kids to a certain standard and packing their minds with information so they could go on to a good university ... The great failure in education, much of the time, is a lack of excitement and stimulus.

Bill Bryson

#2. Perhaps that same concept applied to people as well. Did we love them more when we knew their full story? How they came to be who and what they were? Or was the mystery what kept us coming back for more, slowly enticing us, knowing that once the truth was out, the appeal would be lost?

Amber Lynn Natusch

#3. There's no way that I could do a 9 to 5 job. There's no way. I was not cut out for that. You come in and you work for three months on the one job. They say, 'Great,' you know, and you're on to the next one - and you never even got fired. It's wonderful.

Dennis Quaid

#4. You hear mothers say all the time that they would die for their children, but my mom never said shit like that. She didn't have to. When it came to my brother, it was written across her face in 112-point Tupac Gothic.

Junot Diaz

#5. Acheron: You're really not right, are you?
Nick: Yeah. I know. It was all the paint chips I ate as a kid. They were good, but chromosomally damaging

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#6. On the three pigs he and his wife own: We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and has always been very fond of pigs. Of course, they are for eating, which is why they are named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. You wouldn't want to eat Rufus, Marcus and Esmeralda.

John Mortimer

#7. Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing.

Claes Oldenburg

#8. There are some great teachers who have had great students, but they themselves can't play a note. I don't understand it, because the most I learned from my teacher was just hearing him play.

Joshua Bell

#9. ... so that any time anyone looked up, expecting out of habit to see Shola, they caught his eye, and shared a moment with him, and the hole in the world was known and acknowledged.

Nick Harkaway

#10. They will be bound to make some arrests, he thought, with something resembling virtuous indignation, for the even tenor of his revolutionary life was menaced by no fault of his.

Joseph Conrad

#11. I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.

Harold Feinstein

#12. I don't really listen to bassists - not anymore. When I was younger, I listened to those guys and was trying to figure out everything they did. Nowadays, I draw inspiration from everybody.

Les Claypool

#13. I worked with someone who told me they'd never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

Ariana Grande

#14. There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.

Michael Stipe

#15. I convinced my parents to let me see an agent, but because I had been taught never to speak to strangers, I was so quiet during the interview, they said to bring me back when I was older.

Jason Fuchs

#16. I only worked theater jobs, but they were all really silly when I first graduated. I was a line monitor at 'Spamalot,' which means I got there at 8 A.M. and told people how much the tickets were for standing room. I was an NYU Medical School fake patient, to teach doctors how to talk to patients.

Lauren Worsham

#17. Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism
which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.

Hunter S. Thompson

#18. I was referred to her by a guardian in northern Wilmington, a guy who handles people that are moving into nursing homes. They leave all their stuff there, and we have to empty the houses out. She provides a great service

Richard Harris

#19. But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.

Albert Camus

#20. I didn't cry, because, actually, I was an intercontinental ballistic missile, with an atomic warhead; they don't cry. Why

Annie Dillard

#21. As they climbed into their saddles, Myron bowed his head and muttered a soft prayer.
"There," Hadrian told Royce, "we've got Maribor on our side. Now you can relax."
"Actually," Myron said sheepishly, "I was praying for the horses. But I will pray for you as well," he added hastily.

Michael J. Sullivan

#22. A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.

Jim Jarmusch

#23. I think what my father appreciated was the science experiment of life. He had these kids, and they had their own experiences. He wanted us to discover the world for ourselves.

Ahmet Zappa

#24. They just expected it to you know ... Paul, Steve and I could have hired our own publicist, if we wanted to, but I kind of liked the way it was more of a cult thing and those that liked it, liked it, you know what I mean?

Amy Sedaris

#25. They saw me, those reckless seekers of beauty, and in a night I was famous.

Lillie Langtry

#26. When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.

Laura Donnelly

#27. On the other hand, there is a certain advantage in traveling with someone who has a reputation for shooting rather than being shot: as Keram said, in a self-satisfied way, they might kill me, but they would know that, if I was with him, there would be unpleasantness afterwards.

Freya Stark

#28. All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.

Zadie Smith

#29. I was always watching the boys and how they interacted. It comes with being a feminist, just somebody who thinks a lot about gender and how it plays out in society.

Lynn Coady

#30. To no one, he knew, not even to Willem. But he'd had years to learn how to keep his thoughts to himself; unlike his friends, he had learned not to share evidence of his oddities as a way to distinguish himself from others, although he was happy and proud that they shared theirs with him

Hanya Yanagihara

#31. In the aftermath of September 11, you can't - as Tony Blair was so fond of suggesting - draw a line under historical events. They don't go away. They come back.

Nick Harkaway

#32. But the one thing that totally drew me in was his eyes. They were green but it wasn't the color that I was fascinated by, but something inside them made me feel like I didn't want to look away.
Something seemed to be pulling me toward
him.

Jennifer Whitfield

#33. Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

George Lucas

#34. In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be.

Zainab Salbi

#35. I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers, or I would have to give up five dollars.

Daniel Goldstein

#36. Unlike adults, Phil said, children had an innocence that was refreshing. However, the human world had started to pollute them - like they did with oceans.

Alana Ankh

#37. My mom was always pretty supportive. She saw me do plays and she'd always act out the parts I did. My aunt, who played a big part in my life, was a little bit more reserved, because if they don't see you on TV every week they think you must be starving.

Angela Bassett

#38. One day a pickaninny was happy and the next the light was gone from them; in between they had been introduced to a new reality of bondage.

Colson Whitehead

#39. When I was a model, they called me 'Tyra;' now it's 'Ms. Banks.'

Tyra Banks

#40. Let the psychotics take over. They alone understood what was happening.

J.G. Ballard

#41. When I was in High School I fell for pretty much any girl I ever met. But I was so desperate that I couldn't get any of them because they sensed my desperation! After many, many years, I learned to relax and just be myself.

Jack Black

#42. He just looked at her as if she were an idiot. Or a woman. It was Tillie's experience that most men thought they were one and the same.

Julia Quinn

#43. When people did stupid things around him, that was usually the last thing they did.

Hunter Shea

#44. Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job.

Alex Garland

#45. Finally they reached the Colosseum, where a dozen guys in cheap gladiator costumes were scuffling with the police - plastic swords versus batons. Percy wasn't sure what that was about, but he and Annabeth decided to keep walking. Sometimes mortals were even stranger than monsters.

Rick Riordan

#46. Nobody really metamorphoses. Cinderella is always Cinderella, just in a nicer dress. The Ugly Duckling was always a swan, just a smaller version. And I bet the tadpole and the caterpillar still feel the same, even when they're jumping and flying, swimming and floating.
Just like I am now.

Holly Smale

#47. Love was not in it for me at first. I dated guys because of the way they looked. And then I began to learn that it's what's inside that counts. Love to me now is understanding. It's giving.

Crystal Waters

#48. And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good.

Cynthia Kadohata

#49. They weren't in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And now they knew why it was forbidden.

J.K. Rowling

#50. I was at a luncheon; and some cameras were trained on us. I don't know whether they were for television or not. You know how little I know about cameras.

June Allyson

#51. When I think back, I get mad at what they did to those poor men. Ernie must have had PTSD - they called it shell shock - and the doctors told him to keep it all bottled up inside. They didn't know any better, but it was like treating syphilis with candy bars.

Anita Diamant

#52. I take my vote as a salute to the little guy, the one who doesn't hit 500 home runs. I was one of the guys that did all they could to win. I'm proud of my stats, but I don't think I ever got on for.

Joe Morgan

#53. The ultimate moment where I most felt like a rebel was in St. Petersburg, Russia [in 2012 during the MDNA Tour] when I was told they were going to arrest anyone who was openly or obviously gay and they came to my shows and I spoke out against the government.

Madonna Ciccone

#54. My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of times when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.

Steve Maraboli

#55. People called rock & roll 'African music.' They called it 'voodoo music.' They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan - the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.

Little Richard

#56. In the half-reclined bed, Yaz slept, mouth open, snoring - probably doped. Mike turned on the TV. For twenty minutes, he watched retired generals on CNN discussing Afghanistan and troop surges as though they knew what the hell war was all about.

Pete Barber

#57. so-and-so is using?' You just knew. I never held it against anyone. It was one of those things where you knew they were just trying to keep their jobs, extend their careers. I guess I didn't

John Feinstein

#58. They've got this crazy actor who's 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they're probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

Clint Eastwood

#59. They'd come for you, and this time they'd come with weapons.
I was afraid of that. For you. But not of you.
Never afraid of you.

Julio Alexi Genao

#60. Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.

Bill Bryson

#61. He was impugning my virtue. I ought to have been offended, but for some reason the idea tickled me. That could be my next career: instrument of torture! Seducing prisoners, and then revealing my dragon scales! They would confess out of sheer horror.

Rachel Hartman

#62. The idea that Area 51 was this test facility working to move science and technology faster and further than any other nation is true and is one of the great hallmarks of Area 51. There are other areas of the base that are controversial - but they both exist simultaneously - out there in the desert.

Annie Jacobsen

#63. It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

Terry Goodkind

#64. I watched Ricki Lake's documentary, 'The Business of Being Born,' and that led me to call a midwife, and not an ob-gyn, when I found out I had conceived. My delivery was not easy - they call it 'labor,' not 'a vacation!' - but I was incredibly grateful that I did it that way.

Sarah Wayne Callies

#65. Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities. Instead God sent them a spiritual leader to rescue them from their sins ... He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death.

Paul Weyrich

#66. Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.

Robert Downey Jr.

#67. As they lay entwined together afterwards, they both were sure their future was blessed, and it would never have occurred to them that Henry and Eleanor had once believed that, too.

Sharon Kay Penman

#68. I am wary of sequels. I understand them from the studio's point of view, but the audience doesn't want more, they want better, and I thought the second 'Ghostbusters' was not very effective, it did not really work, so there's no reason to believe a third would. I'm more interested in new things.

Rick Moranis

#69. If people from their own country are killed, they may express surprise, grief, anger, and sympathy. But if ten thousand people are killed in a distant, far-off land, they will not be the slightest bit affected, particularly if it was their own doing.

Hiroshi Yamamoto

#70. Jesus Christ was the original rock'n'roll star. He gave people reasons to live in the rut they were living in. He was the first man to say, "You don't have to have human sacrifices, 'cause human sacrifices hurt somebody, you know?" Just believe in the spirit that is within you.

Ozzy Osbourne

#71. You know, I was a school rebel. Whatever they said do, I didn't do. I was totally anti-everything.

Roger Daltrey

#72. The worse things got, the more she loved him, the more certain she was that somehow they could handle the days ahead.

Karen Kingsbury

#73. I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.

Christopher Walken

#74. I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

Jared Harris

#75. The military has been determined to control the images of war since Vietnam. They're convinced that they lost the war because of loss of political support back home, because people saw what was going on.

Bob Simon

#76. They asked me to do a show, and I was planning on showing my figure paintings. But my friends told me I shouldn't - the paintings were good but a little old-fashioned. They said, "Why don't you show the other stuff?" I had also been making rather strange objects, more in the Freudian tradition.

Claes Oldenburg

#77. That we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. There was no such thing in former days. The people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for their breach.

Mahatma Gandhi

#78. Eight? Was it really eight? Adrenaline or not, this was an insane time to be up. That was humanity's problem right there. They were brain damaged from the early sun.

Kim Harrison

#79. of day it was or how we were feeling, they were

Alexander McCall Smith

#80. I had no idea the amount of people who even knew who I was. Suddenly, they were coming up and saying, "You're my favorite artist." Very surreal. After years of trying to get work, and then coming here and being able to meet some of the fans of Array.

Eric Wight

#81. When I was 15, my parents left town for a month. They hid the keys to the car, but I found them. That month, I drove my stepdad's Thunderbird Super Coupe into Manhattan every day, and I would crank Cypress Hill as I flew around the city, racing the taxis.

Danny Masterson

#82. You'll never see the president carry his own luggage, and why? Because even though we know he has luggage, it would reduce his stature if he was too much like us. We need to think of our leaders as being above us, even though they must still relate to us.

Simon Sinek

#83. Chemistry is one of these crazy things you can't teach or learn or you can't fake. You go in hoping it will work, hope that you will connect with the other actors. I was fortunate on 'Modern Family' and 'The Procession.' They are great people, very easy to like.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

#84. What is most heartbreaking to me is the young women who don't report [being raped] because they were drinking, and they feel like it was their fault that they were drinking. I mean, that is so common.

Claire McCaskill

#85. The echo of the gunshots lingered; it was soon drowned by the chanting of the mob, and I didn't believe what I was hearing. They were chanting, 'We want peace. We want peace.'

Jarreth J. Merz

#86. Sigh. These were my people now that I was a writer, people who didn't understand anything. I mean, they understood perfectly the thing I cared most about - books - but basically were moron-level elsewhere.

Claire Dederer

#87. THE MAGICIAN
They asked St. Germain's manservant if his master was truly a thousand years old, as it was rumored he had claimed.

'How would I know?" the man replied. "I have only been in the master's employ for three hundred years.

Neil Gaiman

#88. What happened was, my parents after 'Circus Boy' decided to take me out of show business for two years to go back to normal school. It was the smartest thing they ever did.

Micky Dolenz

#89. The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety.

Terry Pratchett

#90. They are so very cultivated, so very rich and so utterly charming. At the end of each day, they all ask themselves: 'Is it time I stopped?' And they all reply: 'If I did, there would be no meaning to my life.'
As if they actually knew what the meaning of life was.

Paulo Coelho

#91. The twin guardian angels whose eyes and hands and wings had focused protective attention on the souls that lay there no longer faced each other. They stared blindly into a random middle distance. The scroll they held between them proclaiming eternal resurrection was broken in two.

Clare Morgan

#92. How blest was the created state
Of man and woman, ere they fell,
Compared to our unhappy fate:
We need not fear another hell.

John Wilmot

#93. I assumed it was someone trying to sell me something. They're always calling to sell. Once they said if I sent in a check for $99 I'd be pre-approved for a credit card, and I said, Right, sure, and if I step under a pigeon I'm preapproved for a load of shit

Nicole Krauss

#94. But in any case, I did poorly on the tests and so, in the first three years of school, I had teachers who thought I was stupid and when people think you're stupid, they have low expectations for you.

Robert Sternberg

#95. Well, I was making a record, and I had to choose a name, because they said, you know, you can't make a record under the name of Reg Dwight, because it's never going to - you know, it's not attractive enough.

Elton John

#96. Directors of a large food-manufacturing firm ( ... At one extreme (: one) said it was not his job to protect people from themselves; he was not forcing people to eat his products, and if they chose to do so at the risk of harming themselves, it was of their own free choice.

John Yudkin

#97. What was Christmas for, if not joy?
And they had the most special gift of all to celebrate.

Roxanne Snopek

#98. I mean, you can't have sex until you're married if you're Mormon. The first time I had sex, my parents found out. They were listening in on the phone while I was talking about sex to my girlfriend. They freaked out, man. They both cornered me in my bedroom.

Bert McCracken

#99. Afterwards they would return to America to fight on the Internet over their mythologies of home, because home was now a blurred place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of how inconsequential they had become.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#100. It was the Sephardi Jews who brought fish and chips to Britain, actually, believe it or not, from the Mediterranean world. Apart from actually eating and selling fish and chips, they were kind of debt enforcers.

Simon Schama