To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don’t know and you assume that many of your readers don’t know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone.
My mother gets told, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky that your daughters are doing so well.’ She never corrects anybody when they assume Helen is her daughter.
It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
I always say ‘thriller;’ if they see you’re a woman – and you’re a blond woman – people assume you’re writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.
The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less – less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.
On the basis of Lorentz’s theory, if we limit ourselves to a single spectral line, it suffices to assume that each atom (or molecule) contains a single moving electron.
I don’t mind being called Maddy at all, but I mind the closeness that you assume you get by calling me by my pet name. So merely by calling me Maddy, I don’t give you the authority to come and put your hand around my shoulder.
Contrary to what you might assume, I didn’t start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty.
I answered their questions truthfully and honestly, but I would prefer not to say more. I assume the information was routed back and that is why I was not called to testify.
I think you can assume because our pool of Asian-Americans actresses or actors – men and women – is pretty small, that whatever project is out there I probably have been asked to audition or I probably chose to not go in it for various aspects.
Because we live so much of our adult lives as singles, it no longer makes sense to assume that marriage is the only way people will organize their obligations and commitments.
Directors assume I’m, like, establishment.
Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God’s work.
I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‘title’ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.
People just assume, over the years, that soccer players are not too intelligent. As with most assumptions, they’re wrong.
The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.
The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation.
I beg of you… never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
People assume that I’m an aristocrat, but I don’t really feel part of any class.
We can’t assign beliefs to people who don’t have a voice to express them. And we can’t assume what someone thinks.
People complain that chefs aren’t at their restaurants anymore, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. You see them on TV and you assume they’re not working but they are.
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.
I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.
People assume cheering in the NFL is mostly about a girl trying to snag herself a big, beefy, stinkin’ rich football player. That is not the case.
When I was writing ‘Bad Behavior,’ I was very, very quiet. I would just sit there and listen to people. And if I was out in public, I was usually quiet, and people tended to assume I was stupid because I was a young, pretty girl who’s quiet.
On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance.
People assume I’m fearless. A lot of the things I deal with are pretty scary. Fear makes you pay attention – it’s about absolute concentration.
The wise policymaker doesn’t assume that any policy adopted in good faith will have good results. Instead, he or she weighs the likely outcome of any new policy based on facts and experience – not sentiments and dreams.
My voice is who I am, who I was when I was 3, and who I am going to be when I am 90 years old. When I hit the stage and people do not know who I am, they automatically assume, before I open my mouth, I am going to sing a Bob Marley song!
The Bible nowhere enters into an argument to prove the person and being of God. It assumes His being and reveals His person and character.
People always assume I don’t need to work for money, but my divorce settlement was not as much as it’s always reported to be.
I think everything that any actor does, I would assume, is shaped by how and where they grew up.
The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who knew where I was, was caught for some reason, I should move.
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have – by disrupting that order – a way of surprising.
Given the tendency of many to picture God’s realm as somewhere high above Earth – an idea that sounds suspiciously like the Greek stories of deities perched on inaccessible mountain tops – it may seem plausible to assume that astronomers have special insight. Well, of course they don’t.
There’s an inclination to get on the inside of Jesus’ psyche, and I think that’s a deep mistake because it assumes that what you have here is someone analogous to us.
Everyone assumes we’re always going to have a cocktail and a cigarette in hand. Fans expect us all to be dressed up all the time. They always say to me, ‘You look so young. You don’t seem as tall!’
It’s so funny because people always think of me as being a little bit country or assume that I am from the South – I don’t know why!
When I teach writing, I always tell my students you should assume that the audience you’re writing for is smarter than you. You can’t write if you don’t think they’re on your side, because then you start to yell at them or preach down to them.
The Popish theory, which assumes that Christ, the Apostles and believers, constituted the Church while our Saviour was on earth, and this organization was designed to be perpetual.
There are good reasons why natural selection has become widely accepted as an explanation of evolutionary development. When applied to mammals and other large animals, it fits perfectly. But we cannot assume that all evolutionary steps arise from selection, particularly when looking at smaller animals.
Pet foods come in a variety of flavors because that’s what humans like, and we assume our pets like what we like. We’re wrong.
If you’re winning bike races ahead of guys who’re older than you then they’re going to get upset. When some young guy appears from nowhere, some people who are slower assume they ride dangerously.
It’s OK to pursue speculative ideas because we don’t want to be too cozy and safe and assume that we know everything about life in the universe. However, we have to be rigorous and careful and honest and logical and scientifically meticulous when we speculate.
But at the same time you can’t assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life.
The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.
I’m always amazed at how many people assume a business has to lose money before it makes money.
Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.
I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn’t pose a serious environmental issue.
Too many people who come in as CEO of a poorly performing company assume that none of the incumbent executives are worth retaining. That’s not always the case. Sometimes the talent is there, but it’s not being led well.
When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers’ workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn’t. I got a master’s in journalism.
