After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it.
When I lost weight due to only eating once a day, people said how lean and healthy I looked.
If someone said to me that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari.
When they offered me ‘Wayne’s World 2,’ they said: ‘We were going to give this to another actor, then we thought we’d see you’. I just thought: ‘Surely you always had me in mind for that just in the way that it’s written?’, but they never admitted it. It was a wonderful gig to do. Really special.
If somebody has a bad reputation on the internet or if they have a really good reputation on the internet, I don’t care. I want to meet said person and make up my mind for myself, and then go from there.
When I wrote ‘The World Is Flat,’ I said the world is flat. Yeah, we’re all connected. Facebook didn’t exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.
When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.
My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.
There’s something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.
I had teachers who said I was not good enough. So, I said I will become good enough. So I became this guy who became obsessed to become good enough. Now I sit down and tell people who I was. Now, I say, ‘Do you know who I am?’
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
I said in a speech out in Peoria that with Jerry in as vice president, the pressures on Nixon to resign would be unbearable. I know that Republicans see 50 House seats flying out the window in 1974.
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
A philosopher once said, ‘Half of good philosophy is good grammar.’
After all is said and done, sit down.
My high-school coach Tony Reginelli was kind of famous for ‘Reggie-isms,’ kind of like ‘Yogi-isms.’ He always said if you want to be a good quarterback, when sprinting left you want to be amphibious and throw left-handed. I told him, ‘You mean ambidextrous, coach?’
Electricity can be dangerous. My nephew tried to stick a penny into a plug. Whoever said a penny doesn’t go far didn’t see him shoot across that floor. I told him he was grounded.
I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men’s prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.
I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, ‘Kid, don’t make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you’re like David Frost. Make it a conversation.’
Little said is soon amended. There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.
My wife once said that one of her great ambitions was to walk down the streets of Hong Kong with her children. So we all went to Asia on one occasion. Then she said she’d like to walk down the streets of Jerusalem with her children. So we arranged our family finances and all went to Jerusalem.
If someone had told me in 1963 that one day I would be in Congress, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
They may forget what you said – but they will never forget how you made them feel.
The people who I grew up making music with, we’ve all grown up and become successful in different ways. My manager supported me since I was 16 and believed in me as a musician. He’s been there since Day 1, and there’s so much to be said about doing something with people that you love.
I adopted a motto: Never say no. Jim Morrison never said no, Kurt Cobain never said no. You couldn’t have great things to write about if all you did was sit in your living room with your roommates talking about the phone bill.
Anything is possible. My background is a bad background, but a lot of people said I couldn’t do it. You can do anything if you put your mind to it.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
My dad said to me growing up: ‘When all is said and done, if you can count all your true friends on one hand, you’re a lucky man.’
We use a term called ’empowerment through empathy.’ And ‘Me Too’ is so powerful, because somebody had said it to me – right? – and it changed the trajectory of my healing process once I heard that.
I went to my boss, and I said, ‘Look, I’d like to design these ties because I think they could be new.’ He said, ‘The world isn’t ready for Ralph Lauren.’ I never forgot that because… I thought that was a compliment.
I’m not going to get upset because somebody said something bad about me.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
My father always said, ‘Malala will be free as a bird.’
Our original name was Wild Country, but when we first went to The Bowery, they had the name of all 50 states around the edge of the club, so we went to the sign that said ‘Alabama’ and stuck our band name underneath it.
It has long been said the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Automatic enrollment for insurance of 401k loans would add an additional certainty. Fewer Americans would suffer the unnecessary loss of retirement savings due to unanticipated and untimely misfortune in an already stressful time of need.
I once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.
I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‘He is not a lush.’ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‘Look!’
My dad said, ‘Stay humble, and you gotta work harder than everybody else.’ My mom said, ‘Always be yourself.’ She always told me only God can judge me.
My father always said, ‘Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf’ – so I make sure I read.
I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.
Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.
It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam.
I saw a transvestite wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Guess’.
My report card always said, ‘Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students’.
As someone who’s run for office five times, if the Devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I’d be on the first trolley to Hell to get it. And any politician who tells you otherwise is a bald-faced liar.
Walt Disney always said, ‘For every laugh, there should be a tear.’ I believe in that.
It was a show where you were given a quote out of current events and you had to identify who said it. I was reading eight newspapers a day and had compiled a file of about 300 quotes. I really had to do my research. The White House press didn’t have to bone up on any of it.
So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me ‘Can you give me a lift?’ I said ‘Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.’
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.
We don’t have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures – and I quote – ‘hit the bottom’ so the market could – I quote – ‘run its course.’
I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to move, you’re blocking a fire exit.’ As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
I was always a closet lover of acting. My mom was very practical. She never, ever restricted our dreams, always told us we could do or be anything. Then I said, ‘Maybe I want to be an actor’. And she said, ‘Maybe not that’.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a a hundred times, I’m forty-four years old.
There’s nobody that’s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said. Like if I said, ‘What do I do?’ he’d tell me. And that’s what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust.
