It was the height of the Depression, and suddenly I am earning pots of money.
But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn’t a very committed Catholic beforehand, but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious: I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected.
One day I was sitting in my own pain, and suddenly all the pain and troubles of the world came to me. I received all the pain of the world, all through my body.
When suddenly your focus changes, you see the years going by and it’s an extra reminder that you don’t want to live life with any regrets.
I’m looking for an intensity of focus. It’s a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten, and nothing really changes until you hit that tension, and suddenly it’s there: you’ve got a note.
I suppose I’ve always lived in my own head. I didn’t discover boys till sixth form. Then suddenly it was, ‘Oh! Boys!’
It’s hard when people die, but there’s something about when people die suddenly.
Suddenly in high school, I’m in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
I always wanted to be less tall. When I was at school I was the same height as all of my girlfriends and then suddenly I was turning 12 and almost overnight I got really tall.
The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.
My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of ‘the arts’ began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we’re the parents of Iggy Pop.
I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.
If my own current husband was suddenly a stay-at-home dad, it would be emasculating. That would be hard for me.
I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I’m therefore not a pacifist at all – or am I?
Baldwin is sort of getting to be a bit funny. I don’t know what happened, but a few years ago they suddenly went bankrupt and Gibson bought the whole outfit. Since then they haven’t seemed to be doing an awfully good job of providing pianos.
I love motherhood. I certainly wasn’t aware of any mothering instincts until I had babies. I wasn’t a person who desperately wanted to have kids, but you don’t get it until you do it, and, suddenly, this nurturing instinct exists.
I watched the first moon landing at a bar in Paducah, Kentucky, a fact worth mentioning only because I still remember how suddenly silence descended on this raucous place when Neil Armstrong started coming down that ladder.
My life collapsed. People ran from me because suddenly it was ‘Oh my God! It’s over for her now!’
People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don’t factor in the basic element that they’re humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses.
If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers, or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation.
As a woman of a certain age – and really, ever since I hit puberty and my baby-making parts were suddenly subject to public debate – I’ve been told over and over again that I will ‘change my mind’ about not wanting kids.
Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.
In the early ’90s, it was grunge; everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore makeup, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque; suddenly they’re the biggest band in the world.
The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work, and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence. Suddenly, the child becomes very sensitive to the rudeness and humiliations which he had previously suffered with patient indifference.
One thing that’s happened to me is I’ve been around a long time and I’ve played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I’m suddenly starting to play people’s father.
After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.
When I first started buying shoes with my own money, I would always get them from eBay. I used to hack my mum’s account, and suddenly these white cowboy leather boots would arrive.
I don’t like when you necessarily know that this is the end of the movie. I like when a movie ends abruptly. You go through this, and some of the scenes are uncomfortable, and some are funny – and then suddenly it’s over.
Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn’t thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.
The success of ‘The Celebration’ was like a hand grenade exploding in my face. It suddenly gave me so many opportunities to explore things I had never done before.
When I started to mention to people who know about such things, ‘I’m doing this game, ‘Portal 2’, they got very excited, suddenly. More excited than anything I’ve ever done before, weirdly. Gamers are incredibly enthusiastic about the stuff they love.
Any time I was at Trader Joes, and the person bagging my stuff would be like, ‘Did I go to college with you? How do I know you?’ Then it took awhile, and suddenly people were like, ‘Oh, you are the girl from ‘United States of Tara.’
A crash really occurs when you suddenly have a violent downturn in the market that then heralds a long bull market.
Suddenly a single shot on the extreme left rang out on the clear morning air, followed quickly by several others, and the whole line pushed rapidly forward through the brush.
Leeks, like other oniony things, reach a certain peak when fried. It’s the subtle sweetness that suddenly becomes evident and works so well with their creamy texture.
When you get older, you learn certain life lessons. You apply that wisdom, and suddenly you say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a new lease on this thing. So let’s go.’
Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.
The girls who like me aren’t the ones I like. Or, if I do and they want to commit, I suddenly need tons of time with my friends.
I had a place to go to university; I was going to study history. I was in New York doing ‘Arcadia,’ and I suddenly thought, ‘It feels a bit weird to go from a New York stage to Manchester University.’ It didn’t quite feel right.
Back when Saddam Hussein was in power, the Americans didn’t care about his crimes. When he was gassing the Kurds and gassing Iran, they didn’t care about it. When oil was at stake, somehow, suddenly, things mattered.
I like to remind the contestants where they are by playing the ‘Bake Off’ theme tune on my phone as they walk into the tent. They freak out, as it suddenly dawns on them that they’re on the show.
I never played sports or got into the whole guy camaraderie of, like, ‘I love you, man! Seniors forever!’ So suddenly being in the military with these guys who were under these very heightened circumstances, isolated from their families, living this very kind of Greek lifestyle, it changed my life in a really big way.
The trick is the paradox – turning your story inside out. Now if it is something that appears to be of total normality and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together then that’s fun to write.
I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.
It is dishonest the way that people suddenly think they’ve found guitars, and wear their guitar as a badge.
I wasn’t trying to be a role model with ‘The Dutchess,’ but suddenly, seeing little girls in the audience with their moms made me think about what I do onstage a little bit more. I had to watch my mouth, because it can be filthy. It changed things for me.
I remember talking to someone early on after I was sober about how I suddenly felt awkward at parties. They said, ‘Well, you’re supposed to. Everyone feels awkward at parties.’ It’s an appropriate feeling to feel.
I could always flip between emotions and be available to suddenly do something new. I think it’s a part of playing, and you hang onto it when you’re a kid.
A lot of people my age who are working right now have never acted; they get a show and suddenly they’re making millions. It’s always those people who get it fast who have the most trouble staying grounded and being themselves.
