I think, clearly, where you have a situation in which the Solicitor General tells me, ‘I cannot in good faith argue a certainly legal position,’ and if the president told us to argue that position, we would have to tell him, ‘No, we can’t do that, Mr. President.’
There is a page in ‘Diary of a Worm’ in which the worm tells his sister that no matter how much time she spends looking in the mirror, her face will always look just like her rear end. Any girl that grew up with brothers can relate to the merciless teasing.
A swarm finds the solution people best agree upon. It optimizes collective support, whereas a poll tells us how we disagree.
People come into public life for different reasons. None of us are ego-challenged, I think, or we probably wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing, so if anyone tells you that they don’t like the sound of the applause and the ego gratification, I don’t think they’re being straight with you.
About 15,000 years ago, humans colonised America, wiping out in the process about 75% of its large mammals. Numerous other species disappeared from Africa, from Eurasia, and from the myriad islands around their coasts. The archaeological record of country after country tells the same sad story.
I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
No one tells you that when you get older sometimes you never escape the bullying. I had no idea people could be as mean as they are when you’re an adult.
History is about who tells it.
At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood.
I just know whenever I fall off His path, things get really hard. So I just stick with what God tells me to do.
As soon as you tell me to do one thing, I do the opposite. As soon as someone tells me not to get any more tattoos, I have this intense fire burning inside me to cover myself with them. I don’t care if it’s self-destructive. I just have that need to rebel.
‘Cosmos’ wouldn’t deserve its place in primetime evening network television were it not a landscape on which compelling stories were told. People, when they watch TV in the evening, want to see stories, and science simply tells the best stories.
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
The story of Noah, like other stories in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, are archetypal. Noah’s story tells us that human beings have an inherent tendency towards violence both towards their fellow human beings and towards the creation itself. The story tells us that this violence grieves God.
If God tells me to write another book, then I will.
I did an internship with Dove when they were doing the ‘real beauty’ campaign, and I was really inspired by that. Growing up in L.A., being a young woman, and seeing how the media tells young women to be everything you’re not, I kind of wrote about that experience.
Can you hang in there with your investigators when things get going tough? Don’t give up on investigators because they have a little weakness. Work with them until the Holy Ghost tells you not to.
The Bible tells us that we’re supposed to leave an inheritance for children.
The fact that more than 50 percent of Americans have an immediate family member either currently or formerly incarcerated tells you a lot about just how defining a feature of American culture incarceration has become.
When Oprah Winfrey tells you that you need to have your own show, you feel compelled to do it. Especially if she’s gonna pay for it!
I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that’s becoming like a lost art in American cinema.
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it’s easier, it scales and it’s profitable. But people don’t like it – we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
History tells us that a general can move and feed an army as efficiently as he likes, but the real litmus test is the battlefield.
Country music is the people’s music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells things how they really are.
I really liked to perform. My mother always tells this story: I was five. They had a party, and they’d put me to bed. I heard everyone on the rooftop, and I went upstairs. No one paid any attention to me, so I took a hose and sprayed everyone. Very elegant, right? ‘It’s me! Look at me!’ I loved the attention.
When I was elected, I was the youngest member of the Tennessee congressional delegation; now, I’m one of the oldest. In fact, I have members of my staff who weren’t even born when I took office. That tells me it’s time for a new chapter.
And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it’s true. It’s kind of unbelievable.
When the anchorman is wearing a colonel’s uniform, it tells you something.
Everyone always tells you that you’re the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they’re the only one that can do it right. But when they’re talking to you, you’re always the ‘Best Actor of Your Generation.’
There’s no debate about the greenhouse effect, just like there’s no debate about gravity. If someone throws a piano off the roof, I don’t care what Sarah Palin tells you, get out of the way because it’s coming down on your head.
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
What has always puzzled me is the flexibility of God’s word. For instance, Catholics can now eat meat on Fridays. And limbo has been abolished. How does this work? Who tells them?
A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its description is a foremost resource of the art of fiction.
Every single cell in each person’s body tells us whether that person is a male or a female. There is no human being in history whose cells have some mixture of the two, nor anyone who has ever been able to change that cellular reality.
Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over – except when they are different.
In China, remember, the the banks are arms of state policy. They loan because the local party official or regional party official tells them we need a new stadium. They are instruments of state policy.
In life, I take my decisions and stand by them. Some decisions may have proven to be not the best, but I have learnt from them, and I’ve never repeated a mistake again. If someone tells me to turn left, I will go right! I could not have been taught a lesson in any other way rather than by going through it.
People idealize or reminisce about their 20s, but nobody tells you beforehand that it’s hard and unglamorous and often very unpleasant.
Official boundaries are often hard to see. If you head north on Woodward Avenue, away from downtown Detroit, you wouldn’t know exactly when you left the city and crossed over into Oakland County – except for a small sign that tells you.
Physics tells us observations can’t be predicted absolutely. Rather, there’s a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.
I feel the sexiest when my fiance tells me – when I wake up in the morning and my hair is a mess and I’m in sweats – ‘You look so beautiful.’ So I feel the sexiest when I’m not trying hard.
We have mountain of debt that isn’t going away and all the problems are here to stay, and anybody who tells you that is a good thing ought to get out of the business of helping the government down the road.
Sometimes I Google myself just to see what people are saying. But we all do that. If someone tells you that they don’t, then they are lying.
Sometimes I feel that old desire. Then my body tells me it is 50 years old. I take the easy way instead.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
The minute someone tells you you have cancer, it’s kind of like you die. You really do die. It’s like you get that you’re mortal.
Every other day I read a book. It takes me two days to finish a book. I like reading because if I’m not doing anything, then I read. If my mom tells me to go take out the trash, I’ll go take out the trash, and come back and start reading again.
I can see the music. I know what it looks like. I know what color it is. The words come easy, the tears come easy, and the joy comes easy. The music tells you what to do.
People who know your work and know your personality, they know your strengths and weaknesses. A director like Guillermo del Toro, he knows more about me than I do. I trust him when he tells me what part I’m going to be playing in something, because he’s envisioned that that can only be done by me. He knows it.
