Pick Quotations

I hate mean people. People who just pick at you and try to force you into a train wreck.

You don't go to the library and walk along and pick out a topic. You are riding the bus, or shopping at Safeway, and all of a sudden the idea comes to you.

All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.

I'm not posh at all. I grew up in Sheffield but never managed to pick up the accent - which was careless because there'd be some cache now in being a northern playwright, but I missed out on that one.

We live in America where each and every person has the equal opportunity to take their iPhone or a smartphone and create something and put it online and have the equal ability to blow up and be successful. It's a tool I hope we inspire tons of people to pick up and go after their dreams.

The important thing, once you get 'em laughing, is to keep 'em laughing until you're through. With a 90-minute feature, you've got to stop the laughter and then pick it up again, which is tough.

After school, I'd wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I'd be like, 'I guess I'll walk home.' I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.

I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing.

I pick my actors primarily based on my gut-feel. They could be rank newcomers or established stars, but if I feel they'll do justice to my characters, they are on. I think Bollywood is now looking towards Kollywood for new faces, and, to my mind, Suriya will be a very successful crossover star because he's very versatile.

Dad wouldn't let me fool with his guitar much, because I'm left-handed, and I'd pick it up upside down. But I remember learning to sing 'Paper Doll,' the Mills Brothers song - this was during the war - and I remember my dad taking me down to one of those little record booths where you could make spoken letters to send home.

If you are going to throw a club, it is important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy going back to pick it up.

Right now I just want to chill for a while. Take a hiatus from all the craziness. To clean my house, see my family. Just see some movies and pick some strawberries.

I really loved working with Michael Caine. He's a really skilled and experienced actor. I learn something from everybody, but when you work with somebody like that, you actually learn things you can put in your toolbox, things about craft. Not necessarily life lessons, but actual things he knows that you can pick up.

I've never had to fight for a role. Call it my ego or my self-respect, but I won't pick up the phone and call a producer and fight or ask for a role. That's not me. I've always got the best, and my work speaks for itself.

When Reg died and we first looked into getting a new dog, I was adamant we should pick up a mongrel from an animal-rescue shelter. It's not only that they're usually healthier and have better temperaments, they also fit with my world view - I prefer a ballpoint to a fountain pen, a barber to a hair stylist, and camping over glamping.

Every different social group that I encountered had its different set of rules, so you learn very quickly how to pick up the nuances and change yourself accordingly. When you are not from anywhere, you have to try to find what's universal. You are always trying to fit in.

I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.

You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.

Being yourself is the most important element for me, because, if you're trying to be something you're not, the audience will pick up on that.

A very powerful mechanism to get elected is to play on anger and pick those wedge issues.

In rock climbing, people get strong enough, and then they pick goals they can do with their strengths at that moment.

My voice, my likeness is my livelihood. That's it. I keep it simple. I pick good products.

And when your phone rings, pick it up. Open yourself up to the possibility a phone call offers. Discover this remarkable device called the telephone. It will give you a serious competitive advantage.

Wear what you want to wear. Do what you want to do. Be who you are. Pick out your own clothes. Be a man. And if that's too much to ask, as it almost always is for me, think of someone you consider to be a man and pretend to be like him. I pretend to be like my dad.

I am a book reviewer. I write for a glossy magazine called 'SCI FI.' The money is not life-changing, but it's a low-stress gig. Publishers send me their books. More than I could possibly read. I pick a few and write about them, put a very few others on the shelf, to be perused at my leisure, someday.

I started keeping track of my pet peeves and so far have counted over 160... but to pick one: muffins. They're imposters. They think they're breakfast food, but really, they are just terrible cupcakes.

I was black and blue for about two years, but it's paid off tremendously. You know, if you get enough whacks, your reflexes pick up, and I've become quite good - if somebody throws keys or something, I can catch them.

I suppose if I didn't have Loopt, I'd have to, I don't know, pick up the phone and just start calling people, a lot more texting and certainly more Googling.

In theory, people would pick progression every time over being idle. But if you look at us as a culture, as a people, you would say that if you get up at five o'clock in the morning, eat your breakfast, go to work, make money, pay your bills, you're progressing, when you're still doing what's comfortable.

Basically, I like to pick up my flute, which is a pretty instrument, and play pretty on it.

Even when you've made mistakes in life, you can still contribute and pick up the stuff and move on.

I lost my dad way too early and it was agonisingly awful. I missed him so much and I hated knowing that I could never again pick up the phone to tell him about my day.

Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power - a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment

Children are extremely perceptive and absorb what goes on around them long before they can talk or even comprehend language. They are like finely tuned receivers that pick up much more than is merely said. They are receptive and attuned to every mood, feeling, and change that goes on in people around them.

We have really good data that show when you take patients and you really inform them about their choices, patients make more frugal choices. They pick more efficient choices than the health care system does.

I am able to write musically about the visual. I can pick up tones, I can pick up themes. And I find visual art is a wonderful launching-off place.

I know my way around the kitchen. I like to cook, so I can fry an egg. I guess I could be a fry cook at Bob's Big Boy or something, or maybe a sous chef somewhere a little nicer. I would like to do that. I think I can probably pick that up pretty quickly.

It's sad that the BBC is toning down Dennis the Menace for a cartoon series. He is losing his weapons, catapult and peashooter, will no longer pick on Walter the Softy, and his ferocious grimace is to be replaced by a charming, boyish smile.

I got into a fight with Walt Disney: I always pick the wrong people to fight with.

I went to a Christian all-boys' college one time to pick up my buddies so we could go play baseball, and I just remember walking through the halls, and there's all these crucified Jesuses. It's scary.

I remember, as a boy of 17 years of age, this was a fascinating thing for me: how we human beings breathe out carbon dioxide into the air, the leaves of plants pick this carbon dioxide up, and the plant gives off oxygen, which we can breathe in and keep our life going.

Focus on eating real, whole, natural foods. As I love to say, if you can pick it, pluck it, milk it, or shoot it, you can eat it!

There have been many times in my life when I felt like I'd never pick up the pieces, but God has always given me the power to do it.

In my new IFC comedy game show, 'Bunk,' we actually use our intern Patrick as a human timer - giving contestants the time it takes for him to wade through a bag of broken glass for a razor blade, to get gum out of his hair, to pick up every strand from a box of spaghetti I spill on the floor, etc, etc.

Every child's taste is different. Don't worry if they're not reading 'War and Peace' at age 12. First, build a good foundation and a positive attitude about reading by letting them pick the stories they enjoy. Make friends with a bookseller or librarian. They are a wealth of information on finding books that kids enjoy.

I get to have Sunday lunch at my mum's, pick my nephew up from school now and then: it's a very normal life.

I went home one night and told my dad that an older kid was picking on me. My Dad, a Korean War vet and a Chicago cop for 30 years, told me, 'You better pick up a brick and hit him in the head.' That's when I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to have to start dealing with things in a different way.'

If it's a close election, then it's better for the Supreme Court to pick the president, whether or not he won the election. It's just insane on its face.

I love working if it's with people who are capable of having a good time. People with a little bit of enjoyment of what they do. If it's enormous pressure, and people feel that their lives are at stake, then it's agony. So I try to pick projects where I feel like I'm going to avoid those traps.

I have spent many hours on the beach collecting sea glass, and I almost always wonder, as I bend to pick up chunk of bottle green or a shard of meringue white, what the history of the glass was. Who used it? Was it a medicine bottle? A bit of a ship's lantern? Is that bubbled piece of glass with the charred bits inside it from a fire?

There is a large group that's not represented on television - the group that falls somewhere in the middle of straight and gay. That group is looked down on, because people say, 'You can't be in-between. You have to pick one or the other.'

The way I pick who gets caked is generally by who shows me the most energy and is screaming for it. I still can't help but ask myself... should I stop caking people? Will that stop the haters from hating? Stop giving the trolls more content to target me with?

I know exactly what I want to buy and I spend very little time, maybe 15 hours a year, buying stuff. I'll go in and out of Dunhill in 45 minutes and pick out a few suits. Boom. And I'm gone. I get my shirts at Charvet. I go in there - woosh - and buy 12 shirts and some ties; once a year and that's it.

Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.

I can't pick a favorite animal; I love so many! But I guess if I have to choose, I pick bees! There's this brilliant documentary called 'Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?' I think it's important for people to be educated about bees - they pollinate almost all the food we eat. They are amazing!

Sometimes random things that you wouldn't think mean anything mean so much to them. With kids, you can say, 'Let's go pick some flowers' or 'There's a snail. Let's investigate that.'

I've got more than 600 pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses, from 1950s originals to newer models. I have them on the wall like opticians do so I can pick out a pair that goes with my outfit. I had around 30 pairs, then my husband Rainer started getting them for me as birthday and Christmas gifts.

I haven't been in a position to have the luxury to pick roles for most of my career, so I'm not practiced in that. Usually, when you want to be an actor, you take whatever comes along. If there's an audition, you go for it. If you get the job, you do it - just to get experience, to act, to meet people.

We've been brought up to pick one thing in life and become really good at just that. But that's never what I wanted to be. I was always interested in many things at the same time, and I wanted to try all of them at the same time, too.

It was much more fun playing with him than against him. If you wanted one pitcher to start the seventh game of the World Series, which he did in 1945, you'd pick Hal Newhouser.

Because I'm always away, coming home to a clean house means a lot to me. Trust me, I've lived with a lot of roommates, and straight guys are just kids who don't pick up after themselves.

I've been fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to pick and choose the parts I play. I've also been lucky to always be involved with quality actors, quality directors, quality writers.

Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them.

We all fall off the wagon. It's only one day; it's not the rest of your life. Pick yourself up and go again.

Prison make you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Songs are like children. They are all special to me - you can't just pick a favorite. Of course, 'Lucky Man' was a special tune with a wonderful story behind it. They have all done different things.

A lot of other bass players have told me I'm the only bass player who plays with a pick but sounds like he's playing with the thumb and fingers, which is a great compliment.

If you were looking at where you would like your career to go, then you would have to cherry pick The Stones. People love coming to see them. They are it, they are the most definitive rock n roll band ever.

Every relationship probably has, at its inception, a hundred things that you could pick on and divert you from it, but the feeling is there. You figure out a way to make it work.

For each detail I include, I throw dozens away. So I guess the first trick is to pick the right details, the most revealing details. Then I think one must simply write quick, clean, bright prose. For me, this means rewriting and rewriting: almost never adding, almost always cutting.

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.

I have an issue with dogs - I can't pick up after them. It's nothing personal; it just makes me feel like a servant.

You can't swing with hesitation; you can't try to steer the ball to the flag; you can't worry about that water hazard as you take the club back. You have to pick the right club, visualize the shot you want to hit, and then focus on that shot until the ball is gone.

I remember how much fun it was to pick out my lunchbox. My all-time favorite lunch box was from the movie 'Annie.' Also, I loved picking out school supplies! Trapper Keepers were my favorite.

If I have to pick one story that most influenced 'The Hunger Games,' it would be the Greek myth of Theseus, which I read when I was about 8 years old. In punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to a labyrinth. In the maze was this Minotaur, and it would eat them.

It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back together again.

By the end of it, you never know how it's going to turn out. Hopefully if I pick the right songs and put the right melodies on it and all the collaboration works out. it's a win-win situation.

Promoting education is an effort that is close to my heart. Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental.

When people say, 'Your music was the music of the Seventies,' I say, 'So was discoteque.' The Seventies was also the highest peak of heavy metal. Pick a genre - they were all alive.

One thing to avoid is trendy stuff, though - you gotta go timeless. Even if you want a little luxury in your life and you want to splurge on a Gucci bag, pick a great black one you can wear all the time.

When kids tried to pick on me, I always had one line to shoot them down with: 'I make more money in a week than you'll make in your entire life.' Which probably wasn't true, but they thought it was.

Being an actor, you can get spoilt a little bit: car services come and pick you up, you get put up in nice hotels, people fetch you coffee, and so on. It is wonderful, but you can get lost in that world pretty quickly and start believing that it is real life.

Each time that you're playing a character, it's hard to pick a favorite.

I know so many people who have gone through just not very good situations, and sometimes you just need a song to help pick you up out of it, especially if you're going through the hurting part.

I love that you can pick up your phone at a hotel and have something to eat in your bed. I love home, but there are amenities at a hotel that you simply don't have at home.

I've been doing voices as long as I can remember. When I was little I could pick up on sounds, and then I discovered you could distort what you hear and make people laugh or disrupt a class.

It puts the provider in a situation of looking for ways to have someone else pick up a piece of the cost. As a result, every customer who has insurance ends up paying a 'hidden premium.' It simply adds to the health care cost burden.

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

Whether it's New York or somewhere else, the metaphor of 'Avenue Q,' which is the place you live when you can't afford to live anywhere else - and we've all been through that in our journey. As I always say, at any moment I could be back on Avenue Q if I pick the wrong show.

Each year, I pick something new to learn. One year, it was learning how to knit, and I got 'The Sweethearts' Knitting Club' out of the experience. Another year, it was to volunteer at the local domestic abuse shelter, and I ended up volunteering there for three years.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers - not governments - to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

All my musical foundations go back to the age of 3. My family tell me that I used to listen to the old crystal set, then go to the piano and pick out the tune that I just heard.

My life is the land, the dogs, the car, the motorcycle, the pond, the canoe, going to pick up mail. It's just a rural retreat that I enjoy.

Great entrepreneurs are often great listeners and they can spot patterns and pick up on small details in customer stories.

Rock n' roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting.

But I would lie on the floor and analyze everything. I'd listen to all the strings and the background vocals on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and try to pick out the different instruments.

It's hard for me to assess what I brought because each time you pick up a camera and point it at a person, you're trying to define that person so to talk generally is difficult because I have to think of a given image in order to conjure up what we're talking about.

Hollywood is the place to be for actors - and there's just a big rush when an Australian comes over just because there's less of them. I guess that's just how it is. Like if you pick a pink jellybean out of a jar of green ones it'd be amazing, but if you pick a green one, no one will care.

Embrace yourself and do what you can to look and feel your best. Don't put on so many fashion trends that create a ridiculous style statement. Pick and choose what feels good, and flatters your own body.

I love 'The X-Men;' that was the first comic series that I was dedicated to, because I feel like you can pick your player. 'I'm the most like Gambit... or I'm totally a Storm.'