I don’t think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our ancestors, there was a gradual expansion of the brain; there was an expansion of the complexity of tools.
I never expected to run into a room and suddenly I belonged. I figured people who live on the fringes of society, they’re more free. They can choose to visit anywhere; they don’t belong to anywhere. It’s like being without a nation, in a way.
Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love because suddenly, all your senses are at the setting marked ‘on.’ Suddenly, you’re alert to the secret patterns of the world.
For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.
This is really bad to admit but, you know, when you put your name in Google to see how many credits it’s got by your name or something. So you put in ‘Dolly Wells’ and suddenly it goes ‘Dolly Wells Feet’ or something.
You have to have in mind what you want when you go public. It’s not just an end in and of itself. Suddenly, you have investors to satisfy. Investors who want – who demand – a return.
When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see.
My grandparents had died in 1983, and suddenly my brother is out jogging before Mass, and he dies.
If you think about it, I was at college, and then three months later, I was a massive pop star. It’s stress-making, especially when you’re a bit of an oddball as I was, the black sheep left to your own devices, and then suddenly everyone’s interested in you.
I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.
The episode of the ‘shoe bomber,’ Richard Reid, has suddenly meant more feet being bared at airports than at the average Hindu temple. My solution has been to replace my customary lace-up Oxfords with a pair of slip-on loafers when I fly. Generals are always fighting the last war, and security screeners are the same.
As a writer, I find it very satisfying when a lyric suddenly ties together more neatly than you expected it to. But for the listener, hearing a good lyric is not generally as exciting as hearing a great beat or a great riff or a great melody or even a distinctive singing voice for the first time.
The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.
When you are suddenly standing in front of a bunch of journalists being asked what it’s like being a British Olympic legend, it’s a bit much to take in.
The movies were so healing for me because I had such an isolated, lonely childhood. Going to the movies and having the lights go down, you disappear. If you have esteem issues, suddenly you’re in a void where nobody can see you. You are just by yourself in that darkness, and your loneliness is cured.
When I was starting out, I thought about how the Internet is global and that we should have a global name, a name that’s interesting. At that time, the best name was Yahoo! Suddenly I thought, ‘Alibaba is a good name.’
Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality.
Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn’t know anything.
You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable.
Everything I achieve affects my family as well, and suddenly, my kids’ dad became the most famous man in the country for a couple of weeks.
Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.
‘Veronica Mars’ was my first job, and for some reason, my character changed her hairstyle halfway through the season from curly to – I don’t even know why – suddenly straight.
Any kind of horror video game where I’m the first-person player and I’m… I suddenly stop caring about the video game dude, and I’m like, I really don’t want him to die,’ and then the minute he dies, it upsets me. I can’t play those games.
I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.
And of course I’ve got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I’m now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You’re suddenly hip.
The hardest thing to do in movies is be a day-part player. You have to go in, make your mark, and get out. There’s a lot of leading actors who are not good for a lot of a movie, and then suddenly they have good moments, and they’re like stepping-stones across a particularly feisty stream. They build careers out of that.
I am not worried that the Egyptians will suddenly invade Ethiopia. Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story.
I was totally ignored for a while… that’s a hazard of signing with a small company who say how small they are and how close to the artists they are. Suddenly they don’t have any time for you.
When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like – full of cruelty and hypocrisy.
What makes ‘American Pie’ so unusual is that it isn’t a relic from the counterculture but a talisman, which, like a sacred river, keeps bringing joy to listeners everywhere. When ‘American Pie’ suddenly is played on a jukebox or radio, it’s almost impossible not to sing along.
Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
Writers of feminist dystopian fiction are alert to the realities that grind down women’s lives, that make the unthinkable suddenly thinkable.
Because I had children relatively late – in my 40s rather than in my 20s – it wasn’t anything I ever knew that I would do. It kind of happened to me: I met the right woman and we had children. It was a revelation because it suddenly makes me realize, ‘Oh, I get it. Now I know what to do with the rest of my life.’
Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis.
I was just on Broadway for four months, and the amount of fan mail that arrived at the theater was just overwhelming. I mean, I had no idea! I guess people suddenly had access to me and knew where to find me, so they got me there, and I was amazed.
I’ve been doing Pride and Prejudice all summer, so suddenly the chance to be holed up with a bunch of marines is quite attractive, and probably a necessary dose of male energy.
Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made.
A show is like having a climax. It’s like having an incredible, natural climax. And then suddenly it’s all finished, and you don’t know what to do next.
And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.
Every film is its own experience, its own planet, its own family. It seems infinite when you’re working on it, and then it’s suddenly very finite, and it’s done.
After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!
I was just standing around and suddenly I was cast as an extra. I hated it because I was so shy.
There seems to be great roles for women, and it’s not necessarily – you don’t have to be young women. Suddenly, we’re realizing that, generally, women are interesting, and they can also be weird and crazy and mean.
When done right – or wrong, depending on how you look at it – deficits remove liberal options from the table. Suddenly there’s no money for building bridges or inspecting meat. Not surprisingly, running up a deficit is a strategy favored by the wrecking crew for its liberal-killing properties.
But when I’m losing a few matches, suddenly ‘It’s his fault’, ‘He doesn’t want to practice’, ‘He doesn’t need it’, ‘He doesn’t care’. And when everything goes well, there are people coming behind the stone, saying, ‘Oh, my God, he’s back finally, and I was there to help him out’.
Screen is satisfying because it’s so technical and mysterious. It’s like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it’s either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor – and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free.
One of the biggest things that happens to many people when they have kids is that you suddenly realize that you’re not going to last forever. You know there is another generation who are the heroes of their own stories, and that is humbling.
