Quite Quotations | Page 4

We believe that unilateral sanctions violate international law, in fact. They violate free trade. They violate human growth and development, human development, and that when you actually sanction a bank of a country, the meaning of it is quite clear. You're sanctioning medicine for the people.

Quite honestly, I think that if you are making a lot of television programs with a central character, then ultimately it can become boring if you know nothing about them. I personally want to know, or get to know, things about a character. It doesn't mean to say that they still can't have a certain mystery about them.

When I first decided I was going to have a go at writing a book - and really, it was a mid-life crisis - I was 39. I was in business with my husband; we had a very busy lifestyle and quite a hectic schedule running this flourishing business in travel, and I found myself waking up and realising that I didn't want to do this anymore.

I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery.

Quite a lot of people wanted me to write about my family, I suppose for fairly obvious reasons, and there was always something that would stop me, I thought they were asking me for the wrong motives.

My mother was an introvert and quite religious. And we were brought up in the church. And when she learned that I wanted to act, she simply said: 'You cannot live here and do that.'

I don't feel proprietary, but I do feel there is a human identity to the borough of Hackney that's quite peculiar. It was always bloody-minded and difficult; it always stood up to central government.

I don't understand computers. I've been unable to construct a working mental model of how they do what they do. I can break software by looking at it. I can blow anything up. Without trying. It's sort of like being a dowser. And this extreme elaborate clumsiness on my part is actually something people will pay me for. It's quite wonderful.

We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention.

Our world is drowning in a sea of self-centeredness. You can make yourself quite unique right away by leaving this ocean of selfishness and choosing to be curious about other people.

I've had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I've been a pure angel when I come to the end of it.

I think what 'The Hobbit' and Middle-earth deal in are quite universal and timeless themes of honour and love and friendship... so they're things that do resonate with people.

Belize has a tropical climate and is quite affordable and is developing a reputation as an inexpensive Hawaii. If you want to hide away someplace that is extremely low-key, Placencia is perfect. San Pedro is more touristy and modernized.

The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.

I just never, ever want to give up. Most battles are won in the 11th hour, and most people give up. If you give up once, it's quite hard. If you give up a second time, it's a little bit easier. Give up a third time, it's starting to become a habit.

Newton, of course, was the inventor of differential calculus so his place in the tale is quite special.

I'm a tomboy and quite clumsy, so I'm more like the anti-sexy icon.

Quite simply, if you're feeling anxious, angry, a sense of shame, whatever it is, breathe in and agree to touch or feel it. Breathing out, offer space and care to whatever's there. If there's blocking to touching it, emphasize the in-breath and stay embodied.

My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.

I would quite like to play a big concert as Freddie Mercury. I can't sing that great and I haven't yet found a use for the over large size of my teeth. I quite fancy a mustache like that and he was such a great showman.

I obviously had my reggae, but I got quite into rockabilly when I was a kid, because I was trying to find something that represented me as a white person.

When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.

I'm quite happy with the body of work that I've done, and I've done some really good work over the years that I'm proud of. I'm proud of some of the people that I've worked with, been lucky to have worked with.

I was 26 when I went to my first acting class. I'm naturally quite shy. I'm a quite private person. There's this really strange acting class in New York called Black Nexxus. For someone who's slightly shy or self-conscious, it's the most frightening thing you can do.

I regret the 1998 - 99 lockout. I regret that we didn't work harder to educate our players and our owners about what the damage would be. I never can quite come up with the answer on what else we should have done, but I always blame a part of the problem on us and some part on the players.

There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

I have quite a bit of experience reporting on corporate behavior, both doing it with independent operations in early in my career, in the underground press, to magazines like 'Rolling Stone,' to regional newspapers and television, and television news programs, to papers like the 'New York Times' and public television.

Inside, I've got a real purist desire and dream about the music. I like the idea of being able to carve out a kind of magical, colourful, artistic, inspirational life. And the reality just turns out to be quite different, working with the business to bring this thing you have created into the world.

Even while in school - initially, Vineberg Allen in Mussourie, and later, a number of schools in Ludhiana - I aspired to achieve great things in life. Admittedly, I wasn't quite sure about what these great things would be.

I guess one thing that makes my music stand out is that it is quite hard to determine what genre it is.

You have the wookie character, which is one of the biggest aliens in 'Defiance.' These guys are just walking about with these mechanical faces on, and it actually looks insane. The amount of diversity of all the aliens in the town is quite unbelievable.

I was socially isolated as a kid. I had friends, but I wasn't very good at sports and that sort of thing so I became quite comfortable being by myself, exploring. The world was my private playground, and in it, I was supreme. Darwin, Faraday, Huxley and other great scientists were my companions.

Ever since I was quite young, I was in St. John's Ambulance or the Red Cross; latterly, I've been involved in voluntary work with the mentally handicapped and Abbeyfield Old People's Homes.

My mum is incredibly leftwing, and my dad was quite rightwing - no surprise they didn't stay together - and so I had two very conflicting political opinions as a child, neither of which I was interested in taking any notice of, being a sort of little reprobate.

I love playing serious! That's a relief for me. It means something. It sounds dead corny and cheesy, but on a day-to-day basis, you can't just let loose and cry. So as an actress playing those gritty roles, I can play it quite decently.

It was really tough as a kid going to a Braves game. It was a guaranteed loss. You're looking at 100 losses a year. I was a huge baseball fan, played it for quite a while. But when '91 happened, with Smoltz and Glavine, it turned around, and I will say it made it pretty sweet.

This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn't otherwise get to hear music on quite this level.

I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living.

I was always trying to do architectural jam sessions. But it's not quite as easy as singing or playing a guitar, so I would always see wonderful live musicians and just envy them that I wasn't in that medium.

Building a house from scratch in the middle of a field is a bit like building a prototype car. As with all prototypes, if you're building a car you usually have the luxury of producing several prototypes before you arrive at the production line version - so the opportunity for changing things is quite rich.

I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism.

In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.

The news media is so quick to pick up tragic stories of imperiled children that it seems like there are more terrible events today than ever before - when in fact it's quite the opposite. It is, in all manners possible to calculate, the safest time in the history of civilization to be a kid.

I have yet to meet anyone quite so stubborn as myself and animated by this overpowering passion that leaves me no time for thought or anything else. I have, in fact, no interest in life outside racing cars.

Disease is not the prerogative of man and the domestic animals, so it was quite natural to see if the lower animals, with very simple organizations, showed pathological phenomena, and if so, infection, cure and immunity could be observed among them.

I'm not a rich person financially, but I am in mind and soul. I have so much energy and strength, and I can do a lot of things that make me, and I think my fans, quite happy. When everything's gone, music alone shall live on.

I don't want a lot of guys like me who played the game. Quite frankly, I want blank canvases; I want people to come in with new ideas. I don't want the biases of their own experiences to be a part of their decision-making process.

I have the luxury of getting up quite late, so I hardly ever set an alarm clock.

I've climbed Stromboli when it's erupting, which is quite a heavy climb: three hours with a helmet to get to the top. When you're there, and it's dark, and you can see this eruption and feel it, it's quite different to watching it on TV.

You don't only have the need to do it well because leading a country is something quite important, but also because I am the first woman I have the obligation to do it the best possible way so my country can continue voting for women in the future. It is a big responsibility.

For me, my awkward phase corresponded to an interest in rock n' roll. From experience, I'm guessing an insecure childhood is probably quite a common thing among people who start a rock band.

I've seen pretty much all the 'Peter Pan's except for one of the further back ones where the boy had curly hair. I can't remember. I really loved the 2003 version. I really loved that one because that was around the year I was born. That's quite funny.

I've actually traveled quite a bit with various authors. Judith Miller and I toured the highlands in Scotland with Liz Curtis Higgs, and that was incredible fun. However, I love going with my husband, who - although he is not a writer per se, he is a historian and can give me a lot of insight on various historical locations.

I don't know about the hair. I've had it since I was a kid, and when I look at myself in the mirror, it looks quite normal. But then when I look at myself in a photo, I realise that my hair is basically bigger than my head! There's quite a lot of interest in my hair, which is strange, as for me, it's normal!

Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

I am very proud of what 'Johnny' achieved in stand-up comedy because he believed entirely in giving an audience the best kick he could. But he was someone who was quite detrimental to my health, both emotionally and physically.

Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and I were so different from each other. I was doing very young movies, and Marilyn, who was ahead of me, was doing a lot of homogenized movies that weren't quite as wild as the ones I was doing. Jayne was more of a character of herself.

I remember very vividly what it's like to be a child. The adults you liked were the ones who listened to you when you spoke and gave you time to say what you wanted to say and actually listened, and quite often reacted as a result of what you'd said.

For anyone who works in front of an audience there is no thrill quite like that of feeling and hearing the evidence of the audience members' enjoyment. Laughter and applause really are powerful.

I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.

Tool of Communist agitators... it's really a joke, isn't it? Because, quite clearly, we are a party of real moderates. It just shows how little they understand.

The poor peasant here hives under conditions quite different from those of Russia. Though often terrible, they are not as appalling as they were there.

I was quite academic, quite geeky when I was a kid. I was more interested in going to school than I was in becoming a film star or something.

We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding. Any business that's economical, that can succeed in the marketplace, any form of energy, we're all for. As a matter of fact, we're investing in quite a number of them, ourselves - whether that's ethanol, renewable fuel oil.

People are going to be living quite soon for 100 years. Our idea of how a family works no longer applies. It's no good saying you're going to have children for 15 years and then you're going to retire and have hobbies, because you've got 40 more years to go after 60 and you're in good health until 90 or something.

I wanted to be a farmer's wife. I thought it would be quite fun to wake up of a morning, collect eggs and have sheep and pigs as pets. I know now that it would also involve having to sleep with the farmer, but at the time I wasn't thinking about the sexual implications - I was 11.

With soldiers, their wives are so fundamental in their relationships, and yet there's this kind of other war happening back in the States, where wives of soldiers don't quite understand what their husbands have been through, because their husbands won't really talk about it, and that's really the hidden war.

I get quite excited about things other people have worn. I went through a phase as a student when I wore a lot of 1940s tea dresses.

What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - it's relevant to my life as an actor and as a man.

I think we're quite unique in that we do have our own sound and approach and we don't really care what's going on elsewhere... we've never wanted to be part of another trend or movement.

It was quite natural - the first day I got to the set I was really nervous, but I loved the whole experience.

It is, of course, quite natural that a biologist whose attention had been aroused by noticing in his own case the phenomena of precocious old age should turn to study the causes of it.

During my jury selection process, we went through over 360 jurors. It took six months, all New York residents. Of the 360 jurors, over half of them had been mugged one time. Quite a number of them, maybe 30 40, 50, had been mugged twice.

Now I have never met a group of people who hate music more than professional roadies, and it is clearly obvious that 99.9 percent of them know nothing at all about music. Nothing. I find this to be quite strange, really. It's like someone who works in a bakery knowing nothing about baking.

I'm a great admirer of 'The Simpsons.' It's very surprising because it's backed by a right-wing television company in the U.S., and quite often it's poking fun at the people who would be its audience.

As a young actor, I would be invited to the CBC radio drama department to do voices for different characters, and I found that I could do quite a few of them. I wasn't a visual presence, and I found it easier to construct a voice from the written page.

We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.

I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

We made satires of everything - news broadcasts and TV shows that we watched. When I look at them now, they are totally amateurish, but I find it quite remarkable that we were so skeptical of the world! My parents watched them and thought they were funny; they really encouraged us.

I reluctantly soldiered on to the raccoon. It actually would have tasted quite good had I not had the image of a raccoon rummaging through the garbage stuck in my head.

I always think that I have plenty of time for everything, and then the reality of it doesn't quite match up.

Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do.

Just the actual physics of putting it all together, you know, the latter period is actually quite fragmented in terms of the licenses and all those things so it makes a compilation of the full twenty years really a technical minefield.

For, quite literally, the whole world today is looking for us to take the lead in carrying out those obligations imposed on the American people as a whole by the beautiful, compassionate and courageous principle of noblesse oblige.

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot: I would hear a part of a song that would really relax me and then put it on repeat. That would send me to sleep. It was quite obvious classical music, people like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel.

I was quite nervous about meeting William's father, but he was very, very welcoming, very friendly, it couldn't have gone easier really for me.

We have Beast, our Hungarian sheep dog. And he is so talented. He's so smart. He knows his daily schedule. He has an extracurricular activity. He goes herding. He herds sheep. And we've been told that he's quite gifted.

Lou and I met while we were in high school in our senior year. We were in many of the same classes together and quite a few times we went over to his house to hang out.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

I think one of the odd things about public life, coming from the outside, is that people seem to be paranoid. Maybe they were quite frank initially, but then they did one thing which went wrong.

I quite liked having a baby - I think I won't put it more strongly than that. But I had no intention of allowing motherhood to disrupt my work as an archeologist.

My career was quite unusual, so my main advice to someone interested in a career similar to my own is to remain open to change and new opportunities. I like to tell students that the jobs I took after my Ph.D. were not in existence only a few years before.

I still find it quite easy to find my way into a child's imagination. We're all Peter Pan ourselves in some respects. Everybody should keep some grip on childhood, even as a grownup.

Stand-up comedy is all you. It's your show, it's your game. You control every aspect of it - of that experience and that expression. There's really nothing quite as satisfying.

When I did the video for 'Holding Out For A Hero,' we filmed that on top of the Grand Canyon, and that was quite frightening. I was close to the edge, and there was a helicopter hovering about, creating a lot of wind, and I was nervous I was going to fall off.

My dad is quite possibly the biggest Giants fan in the world. I believe he wore a Phil Simms jersey to my high school and college graduations.

Explorations into chemistry were done in our basement, sometimes with friends, and my parents must have had quite a bit of confidence in my abilities when they allowed me to experiment with explosive mixtures.