Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough – that we should try again.
A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.
My grandpa always tells me that 45-minute lunches are key because an army marches on its stomach.
‘Little Night’ comes from deep in my heart, and tells about the lengths people will go for love.
If I’m with my dad, yeah, he’s going to talk a good bit about the business. He just kind of mentors me and tells me what he’s thinking about my stuff.
I’ve colored my hair so many times, and nobody tells you the damage it’s going to do! I went blonde and lost all my baby hairs. I’m not coloring it anymore. Never again.
You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, ‘We’re not the place for you to make films,’ so you decide you have to make a film yourself.
In the Seventies, a lot of executions via electric chair failed because of technical problems. Seed tells the true story of someone who survived and sought revenge. They buried him alive to make it seem he was dead.
There is a degree of confidence exhibited towards strangers in Sweden, especially in hotels, at post-stations, and on board the inland steamers, which tells well for the general honesty of the people.
I want you to hear from God. God already spoke to me what I’m going to write out. You’re going to write your checks to Paula White Ministries. If God tells you to give $12.99, do it. Whatever the Holy Spirit speaks to you. If you need to give by credit card, do so.
Every election matters. Anyone that tells you otherwise doesn’t understand politics. That said, not every election sends sweeping messages that are easy to discern, but every election provides lessons worth learning.
It’s a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society – in many ways – tells us that suffering is wrong. If it’s our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we’re taught to put them away somewhere so we don’t have to see it.
I think every artist’s next work will reflect a new chapter in their autobiography. Each album tells a story about where they were at during a particular period and how they have evolved.
I enjoy wearing pins, and nobody tells me to do it.
As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.
Sarah Paulson doesn’t lie. Like, in life. But she doesn’t lie onscreen, and you can’t take your eyes off somebody who always tells the truth. She’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.
One day, when my son was eight, he came into the kitchen while I was cooking and said: ‘You put bad words in your books, don’t you?’ No doubt he had overheard my mother, who often tells people who ask about my work: ‘Well, you’ll never find her books in the Christian bookstore.’
There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t get an email from someone who is angry with me and tells me they’re not going to let their kid listen to Imagine Dragons anymore.
History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?
If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!
No matter if you have one hand or two hands, when someone tells you you can’t do something, the only thing you can do is just prove them wrong, no matter what it is, no matter how hard it is.
God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.
‘The Wizard of Oz’ is my favourite. It explains what life on this planet is about. Although Dorothy reaches Oz, she finds she had what she needed to go back to Kansas all along, but the Good Witch tells her that she had to learn it for herself. All of the answers to the meaning of life are there.
I love to cook and really enjoy cleaning my house. People always tease me about getting a maid. My girlfriend tells me that they are only $40 and will do everything. But that is my time to unwind, put my hair in a ponytail, throw on sweats, and be myself.
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Anyone of my generation who tells you he hasn’t ‘done Brando’ is lying.
Life usually tells the best stories – but sometimes it takes an artist to show us what they mean.
Pope Francis tells us who he is by pointing to Caravaggio’s St. Matthew: ‘Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze.’ He is telling us that he has experienced the same rush of speechless wonder and graced love Caravaggio depicts in his painting.
The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.
Anyone who tells you fatherhood is the greatest thing that can happen to you, they are understating it.
Literature more often tells the story of impulses we don’t act on than of ones we do. I could joke about the Cain and Abel story with my brother without expecting him to be worried, though it’s always possible he was more anxious than he let on.
The twentieth century may tell us that we have nothing to be complacent about in the recent history of humankind; but it also tells us that there is nothing inevitable about tyranny.
Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he’s not interested in it, you know perfectly well he’s lying.
The appearance of the bones of quadrupeds, especially those of complete bodies in the strata, tells us either that the layer itself which carries them was in earlier times dry land or that dry land was at least formed in the immediate area.
It was described as Sex and the Suburbs. It’s so not that. Because on Sex and the City, those women told each other everything; on our show, it’s much more like the real suburbs – nobody tells anybody anything. Everything’s a secret.
No one ever tells us the truth, even those we love.
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
That’s the trick of free market economic theory: it doesn’t just ask you to only be selfish and not care about others. It tells you that by being selfish, you are helping others. And, in fact, by trying to directly help others, you will hurt them.
One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.
My wife always tells people, ‘He’s not going to be able run to for anything because I’m not going to let him start a campaign.’
One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.
I didn’t need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn’t look good in the camera or if the actors didn’t hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?
The biggest compliment I get is when someone tells me, ‘You’re so real.’ Even if my journey isn’t exactly like theirs.
Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women’s hair. Hair is hair – yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.
In ‘Honeymoon in Vegas,’ after Nicolas Cage tells his fiancee that he’s given her away to pay for his gambling debts, she gets into a tizzy as if she were a 6-year-old. I couldn’t believe it.
I’m the weirdo that tells – asks – the Uber driver to please turn the radio down. I’m so polite about it, though.
I’ve been a writer since I was 13. I’ve been writing scripts and having pitch meetings. So, when I do see people like Brit Marling getting things done, it lets me know that it’s possible. It basically just tells me, ‘Dude, get to work!’ For some reason, I think that I’m not doing enough work.
The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there’s 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you’re a good listener, and you can imagine how someone’s talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?
In the last recession, 99 percent of us have lost wealth, but did you know that the top 1 percent increased their wealth five times? It tells you they create recessions so they get wealthier.
The coach is the boss at the end of the day. I do whatever he tells me and don’t ask questions.
I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless.
What I want to understand is what I am talking about on the stage. What I don’t want to understand is what the government is talking about when the government tells me about taxes.
But, my dear, I knew when I was a baby what I wanted to do, and I’ll tell you, kiddo, if you don’t do what your heart tells you, you’ll never be real.
