My first day on the set of ‘John Adams’, I was just supposed to fly to Virginia for a costume fitting. But the director figured, why not shoot it, too? So they threw me into a dress that didn’t fit, gave me lines I hadn’t seen, in a dialect I didn’t know, and two screaming, arching infants.
My family’s lineage, we are warriors. The McGregor clan, we are warriors all through. We are famous all through the world for our fighting capabilities of all generations. So I have no doubt that’s stood to me and that led me down this path and gave me what I have.
No person ever gave me nothing but God.
My marriage to Marjorie is the most rewarding thing that ever happened to me. She gave me a life and a relationship that I didn’t know existed.
We need Big Ideas, as we are in a time of small people, and as Kennedy showed with Apollo, doing something grand in space is the biggest. At a time of huge national doubt and fear of losing our leadership as a nation to others, it focused us, gave us something positive and inspired a generation.
It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Being a lifelong athlete, I am a firm believer that I am who I am today because of sports. Not only did it give me structure and a solid foundation, but it gave me a sense of failure and how to overcome failure.
I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn’t hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.
I’d gone to Oxford to do graduate studies in the history of the slave trade, but I came across Georgiana’s letters, gave up that thesis, and wrote one on her instead. When I learned that Georgiana’s great-nephews supported opposite sides in the American Civil War, I knew this would be the perfect sequel.
For me, my films are not like my children. They are like my ex-wife. They gave me so much; I gave them so much; I loved them so much; we part ways, and it’s OK, we part ways.
Hatta always gave the impression of rain. If I was in a real good mood and full of ideas and then happened to encounter Hatta, I felt I was suddenly surprised by a shower of rain and got wet all over the body. My good mood was gone, and also my ideas.
After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.
I got sent to a health camp when I was about 6 years old, and we all had to wear the same starchy blue uniform. The lady who took care of me after school knit me a burgundy sweater. It was the only thing that gave me any individuality.
San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don’t mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean you. Music, that’s what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.
My original name was Juaquin, and my cousin couldn’t pronounce my name right. So he’d just be saying ‘Waka! Waka!’ So when I was younger, I used to always laugh, then my man Gucci gave me the rest of the name.
I lay in the bed at the hospital and said, ‘let’s see what I have left.’ And I could see, I could speak, I could think, I could read. I simply tabulated my blessings, and that gave me a start.
Nagesh Kukunoor is my rakhi brother and a very good friend. He gave me ‘Dor’ which was an epic movie in my life. I owe it to him for such a good break.
God gave us our agency. He taught us a way. He showed us what to do. But he gave us our agency and left us free to act as we choose to do.
When I changed my degree to acting, I almost gave my parents heart attacks.
There may be a new album, and there may not. Right now, we’re encouraging bootlegging because there have been some great live things that ended up on the Internet. Rather than try to stop it, we like it. If nobody gave a crap about you, they wouldn’t bother to bootleg you.
There was an incident, in 1912, which ‘gave me a turn,’ so to speak: when I brought the ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ to the Independants, and they asked me to withdraw it before the opening.
All I’m trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.
We just couldn’t seem to get the love from the Nashville awards shows… So Grammys really gave us validation, and so that’s why they’re such a big deal for us.
On ‘There Will Be Blood,’ I was cast at the last minute. I had 3 and a half to 4 days to get ready for the first day. I just went for it, threw myself in there and gave it everything I had. That was just guts and instinct, not a lot of preparation.
When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.
My dad said to me, ‘Work hard and be patient.’ It was the best advice he ever gave me. You have to put the hours in.
The reason why Broken Men only became Untouchables was because in addition to being Buddhists, they retained their habit of beef-eating, which gave additional ground for offence to the Brahmins to carry their new-found love and reverence to the cow to its logical conclusion.
Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.
Keynes’s contribution was not just to advocate spending government money in the middle of a recession. Every government had done that going back to the days of the Irish potato famine. What he gave to us was a way of thinking about the magnitude and the dimensions and so forth.
Musical theatre is something that I always wanted to be a part of, and my first ever role on the West End as Joseph in ‘Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat’ gave me a taste for it.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
My mom gave me a Chanel dress when I was younger. I felt special. I think anybody feels special in Chanel.
I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
My mum gave me pretty good genes in that department. She had gorgeous skin. That good English complexion. She never seemed to have a blemish that I knew of.
I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and I was pressed by the math department to go on to graduate school. Actually they gave me fellowships that paid my way, otherwise I would not have been able to continue.
I wanted to give money to people like this woman so that they would be free from the moneylenders to sell their product at the price which the markets gave them – which was much higher than what the trader was giving them.
I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.
I was in musical comedy. And I did very well, but the memorization killed me. I’m not good at memorizing, and it gave me a lot of anxiety. I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn’t really like dressing for parts.
My dad was a very quiet person, and unbelievably tough. But my grandmother gave me my first look at negative thinking to bring about positive results. When I was just a little guy, anytime I came to my grandmother and said I wish for this or that, Grandma would say, ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’
I’m bad in front of the camera. However, if someone gave me a small role in a film with two dialogues and one scene, I’d do it.
While they would have provided financial support if I had needed it, the greatest support my parents gave was emotional, psychological.
We support too big to fail. We want the government to be able to take down a big bank like JP Morgan and it could be done. We think Dodd-Frank, which we supported parts of, gave the FDIC the authority to take down a big bank.
I kept the first Rickenbacker I ever got, a little short-scale John Lennon-type model. And I’ve got a couple of 12-string models, which are really nice, and I’ve got a Pete Townshend model, which Pete gave me a few years ago. But that’s about it.
I tried to join three gangs, and every single one gave me a different excuse, but it was pretty much along the lines of, ‘You’re too goofy. You’re too cute. You don’t fit in.’
They told me I gave the best milk mustache of anybody.
I was educated by monks – I thank them dearly for the education they gave me, but I am no longer a Catholic.
I was the first woman to speak ever at the National Press Club, and they gave me a necktie.
