I don’t think I could, with a straight face, describe myself as a completely positive person, but I’m not overly negative, either. On the whole, most writers think plots through to their consequences, and it’s not always a sunny place. I have an occupational temperament for anxiety.
I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I’ve made a much better grandfather… I don’t think I was ready to be a father to be honest.
I’m really interested in social justice, and if an artist has a certain power of being heard and voicing something important, it’s right to do it. It could still be done in such a way that it’s not aggressive or overly didactic. I’m trying to find that form.
When you’re writing a book, you don’t want it to be overly trendy because you want people to enjoy it for years and refer back to it.
I’m overly sentimental and don’t throw things away.
We’re raising a generation of kids who are being overly praised for incredibly minor accomplishments. I think it’s counter-productive.
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Most of my friends aren’t actors – and not one of them is overly impressed with what I do.
The individual must not be allowed to be overly free, but the country must be entirely free. When the country can exercise freedom, China will have become a mighty and prosperous nation.
Without sounding overly sentimental about the process, I’d say trying to describe how you tend to conceive of a book is like describing how you tend to fall in love.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page – but rather, will assume that she’s getting it right without the struggle.
I’ve got an overly developed sense of what selling out is, and I of course worry about it too much.
I’ve always been a religious guy, but not overly religious. I’ve always believed in God and Jesus. I pray.
The Kennedys tried to avoid using the big U-shaped table, but when they couldn’t, they had several tricks – including keeping the flowers simple – to keep it from appearing overly stiff and formal.
I wouldn’t ever pose naked… I’m fine to do bikinis and certainly lingerie if I feel it’s done tastefully… cute like Victoria’s Secret, but nothing like raunchy or overly sexual.
The thing is, when I feel like I have to lose weight, the opposite happens. I remember stuffing loads of chocolate on the plane to the shoot, and I thought, ‘Why don’t you have the courage to show up in a body that’s natural, not overly worked out?’
I’m not an overly skilled piano player or organ player at all, but I think I’m the right piano and organ player for the Heartbreakers. And I’ve been the right piano and organ player for a lot of sessions that I’ve been called on.
Writing has never been an intentional endeavor to me. I know a lot of people have experiences and then sit down and try to sort them out through song, but whenever I sit down to write, it comes out hackneyed or overly saccharine.
The area where I grew up in Birmingham was very diverse – I was aware of my race but not overly aware of it – and there seemed to be an understanding that we were all very much in the same boat.
I became a master of disguise and could play the straight man down to a tee, sometimes over-compensating by getting into fights or being overly aggressive because I didn’t want the real me to be found out. So I created this alter ego, knowing full well that I was living in my little fantasy bubble, my shell.
I’m not overly greedy.
As a kid, I was overly studious, overly serious, very academically driven. It was important to me on a cellular level to do well. And then I went to college at Harvard, and I relaxed a little bit.
There is a tension in relationships between wanting to return to the womb, but also wanting to be free. Because sometimes the woman’s attentions can be overly maternal, and you want to go, ‘Ahhhh!’
I try not to be overly literal. When I’m writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.
I think that – this is my personal opinion – but sometimes African American athletes are considered overly cocky.
There are a lot of people who are overly judgemental on the Internet.
We didn’t grow up overly religious, but there was an understanding that you had a duty as a citizen to help your fellow man.
I don’t want to be overly philosophical, but I think there are things you earn for yourself as you go.
We’ve always been modestly leveraged, and we’ve never believed in a great deal of leverage on either our private equity business or on our investment banking business. And I think it really goes back to my uncle and dad growing up in the Depression and just seeing what happened to people who were overly levered.
I think directors can become overly infatuated by gilt and gold, and the word ‘lavish’ and everything being magnificent.
I didn’t enjoy studying for my A-levels, so didn’t really want to go to University to do something overly academic, and when I saw that Creative Writing was an option, I suddenly realised that it was something I could try to do.
I think was overly empathetic for a while in my life.
I didn’t grow up overly privileged.
I can see how the young girls really get hurt when their moms are critical, or vice versa when they’re overly critical of their moms. It can be so painful.
I am, of course, directly descended from Brian Boru, the last king of Ireland, a fact certified by my mother and therefore beyond dispute. But as everybody else with a drop of Irish blood in his carcass is also a guaranteed descendant of the old billy goat, I am not overly arrogant because of this royal strain.
My basic philosophy is never do anything with the word ‘celebrity’ attached to it. Without being overly pompous, if you have worked hard to have an audience trust you a bit, why blow it? That is my currency.
I’m not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy.
Amy Winehouse was not a person I ever met, and I can’t say that I am overly conversant in all of her music. I do have her albums, and years ago, when I first heard her sing, I thought she was extraordinary. The tone of her voice, her phrasing, her raw appearance – these qualities were extremely captivating to me.
I can’t show false humility, nor be overly proud and ostentatious.
Raymond Floyd. The man knows how to control situations. He was experienced. He didn’t let me get overly excited; he kept me in check. It allowed me to free myself up, and I played really well with him.
I write about what I know: teenage dating, overly charged sexuality, all the things that make you uncomfortable.
As a high-school drop-out, I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn’t overly confident that I was going to be writing anything serious. I was happy enough with the idea that I could be a penny-a-word guy and survive.
I am whelmed, and not overly whelmed, just whelmed about a lot of facets in life – just how fragile life is and the different challenges you have in life, phobias about things.
I really like Braun Strowman. I would turn the volume down on him just a little bit. I think he is a little bit overly animated, and he doesn’t have to be. He is already a larger than life character when he wakes up and has a cup of coffee.
Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying or getting overly angry or to maintain control.
I’m not an overly happy person. There are times when I’m happy, and that’s usually in my private life.
I don’t want to make any general statements, but I feel like so many stories that are presented as being about humanity and human emotion are just so convoluted and overly dramatic and focus on these certain little things that are supposedly meaningful, but just don’t really mean anything.
It’s funny; it’s a real balancing act. In TV, everybody’s talking about authenticity. In order to make ‘Dirty Jobs’ authentic, I really can’t be overly informed. The minute I am, I become a host… It’s a very tricky business paying a tribute to work, because TV is very bad at it.
Piercing minds go mute around poetry. It is imagined to be overly technical, like advanced arithmetic; otherworldly, priestess-like; suffocatingly personal; excessively decorative; exhaustingly bourgeois or tiringly avant-garde.
I didn’t feel a strong bond with the parents who raised me, and I had anything but a happy childhood. My mother was overly sensitive; my father, ascetic. I was neither. I felt as if I were living with complete strangers. I suspect that my parents felt the same way.
In a way, I’m overly ambitious, selfish in a way. I think because I am so active, I think that’s what keeps my brain going and I can bounce things off of each other.
I’d gone from being a mum to all of a sudden having people fussing and overly pampering me. It can easily change you.
Reviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they’ll often start flying off the handle. But I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve had those times in your life. Everybody has.’
