Top 35 Nailed Quotes

I was born singing. My father tells this story about when I was 3 weeks old, how I would rock in the crib and sing in the crib all night long. My crib would roll across the floor in the middle of the night. Finally, my father nailed its legs to the floor.

Chemistry seems to be pretty much nailed down, and biology gains ground all the time. But physics seems to be mired in idle rumination. They think a Big Bang started the universe, but they don’t really know.

I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn’t anticipate. It’s really good to think we got it all nailed – of course you’ve never got it all nailed.

Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.

The first time I thought I should be an actor was in school. I thought, ‘At least this is something for which I won’t have to study.’ But I’ve realised that an actor needs to be constantly unsure about what he’s doing and about what’s going on around him. The moment you think you’ve nailed it, you’re dead.

What am I responsible for? Who am I responsible to? Everybody? How come when Archie Bunker nailed everybody, it was funny – but when I do it, it’s not?

Every job is different. I don’t think that I’ve ever had that wonderful feeling when you’ve finished a job or where you feel like you’ve mastered it or sort of nailed it… You can never be satisfied. If you’re satisfied, it’s time to retire.

Sickle cell does not have the priority in this country that it had in the 1960s, when I started working on it. Congress has been cutting everything that wasn’t nailed down.

No one leaves the edit room thinking, ‘Yeah, I nailed that one!’ Everyone I know goes into their first premiere or their first screening thinking, ‘I screwed up so bad. I’m sorry, I messed up.’ It’s just a real common feeling.

Sometimes you walk out of an audition and you kind of know you nailed it and you’re probably going to book it, but you very rarely are told in the room by the people who are hiring you.

There’s an inherent danger in letting people think that they have perfected something. When they believe they’ve ‘nailed it,’ most people tend to sit back and rest on their laurels while countless others will be labouring furiously to better their work!

I think George just nailed the whole thing, the whole time period, the whole look and feel of what that newsroom was like. I did a lot of research for the role and believe me, it’s all pretty genuine, down to the very last cigarette butt.

A lot of Americans say the food in England sucks. I don’t think the food in England sucks – the food is great – but I’ve got to say, the Americans have got the dining out experience nailed down.

When I started with ‘Fugly’, I was excited that I was playing a raw and edgy character in the film. After I nailed the audition, I realised that the role wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

If you look at the character of Sadness, they really nailed my eyebrows.

Of all the soul divas, Gladys Knight was the one for me. Knight’s always been about tone and heart, none of the big showboating or extraneous doodling. She nailed a melody and only played a little around the edges like Ma Staple.

If the door is nailed shut, and you’re ‘Leaning In,’ you’re just going to get bruised and battered.

I can only think of one wacky best friend who I thought was awesome: Rhys Ifans in ‘Notting Hill.’ He really nailed the wacky best friend.

I never come away from a film thinking I nailed it.

I’m not a good writer, and I don’t care. Unfortunately, after I left college, I didn’t have time much for literature. I wish I did. Most of the time I read documents, and that’s not going to help your writing. But I’m a very logical writer, and you can’t get out of me. Once I’ve nailed you, you’re finished.

As the writer, you’re always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you’re writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you’ve also nailed yourself.

If you had asked me, did I have everything nailed down and wired about what I wanted to do, and was I following some real plan? No. In fact, by the time I was in my mid-20s or even late-20s, and I was still in the law firm, I really was starting to get a little nervous that I didn’t know what I was going to do.

There’s nothing worse than finishing your last take on a movie and thinking, ‘God! I finally nailed who this guy was!’

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.

You have to use your pain as your gift. If you’re able to take something really negative and repackage it as something positive, you’ve nailed it.

‘Peace Mom’ is my most heartfelt, but I am most proud of ‘Myth America’ because I nailed the problem and gave the solutions long before the Occupy Movement. I think it’s a great organic class analysis.

My character is ‘Get up and keep fighting,’ unless I’ve been nailed to the ground.

On sensitive issues, talk isn’t cheap – it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Trickster stories are pleasurable, contradictory, annoying, abrasive. They’re powerful, transformational acts of liberation because they are not nailed down to the real, to the representation of something in the world.

I don’t have a single complete show or movie or anything else that I could look at and say, ‘Nailed that one.’ But endless dissatisfaction is, I suppose, what gets us out of bed in the morning.

Now, I am about to be nailed as the man who disliked ‘Howl’s Moving Castle.’ Lord, give me strength! Also, IT, please disconnect the e-mail thing.

At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there’s truth in them, you haven’t nailed it. They aren’t as funny as they could be, and they don’t make a point.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.