David Petraeus Quotes

I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.

David Petraeus

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• A lot of authors, judging by their list, will put anything out that they finish... That's the worst model I've heard of in my life. It's just idiotic. Why wouldn't you just wait for the good ones?

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Life
  • Good
  • Why

• I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Time
  • Think
  • Doing

• You have, in America, you have gang signs. Well, 5,000 years ago, there was thing called a mudra, which is your sitting position when you do yoga or you're meditating or you're praying or whatever. And there's not a lot of them that are named after gods and goddesses, but the middle-finger is specifically named the Matangi mudra.

  

  M.I.A.
  • America
  • You
  • Years

• I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

  

  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
  • Believe
  • Success
  • Failure

• I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Giving
  • Feeling
  • Tension

• I try to keep a low profile.

  

  D. B. Sweeney
  • Try
  • Low
  • Profile

• The acting came about because of a girl. I was 19 and met a girl who wanted to go to the premiere drama school in Australia, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, where Mel Gibson, Cate Blanchett and many others went. She had an audition, and I went with her for moral support - to cheer her on. I did an audition my way, and it kept going.

  

  Sam Worthington
  • School
  • Girl
  • Support

• The evangelical Christian faith I'd grown up with sustained me. It demanded that I refuse the drugs and alcohol on offer in our southwestern Ohio town, that I treat my friends and family kindly, and that I work hard in school. Most of all, when times were toughest, it gave me reason to hope.

  

  J. D. Vance
  • Up
  • Work
  • Family

• President Obama stands ready to work with everyone, because that's what the American people expect and deserve - not for the short term political advantages, but the long term health of our country. We don't spend time trying to figure out what's in the minds of Republicans, we try to keep our focus on the American people.

  

  Valerie Jarrett
  • People
  • Time
  • Work

• Just being in the gym every day with someone with goals in common is special.

  

  Daniel Cormier
  • Day
  • Goals
  • Gym

• Sport and health are so important to our nation that they deserve to be right at the front of people's minds.

  

  Daley Thompson
  • People
  • Important
  • Health

• It's my job, too, to keep up with pop culture and what the kids are into 'cause you don't want to sound like an old man trying to write for kids. I spend a lot of my time spying on them.

  

  R. L. Stine
  • Up
  • Time
  • Trying

• Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Selfish
  • Aim
  • Experiment

• I didn't want to start acting like a cartoon.

  

  Rachael Leigh Cook
  • Want
  • Acting
  • Start

• It's interesting to try to imagine how early humans discovered what was edible and what wasn't. Who figured out that when you cooked stinging nettles, the sting would go away completely? How many people had to die before the relative toxicity of wild mushrooms became widely known?

  

  Kate Christensen
  • People
  • Interesting
  • Die

• Meyer and I have a bit in common because we're both left-handed. I think it's great that he seeks out that advice because he's not too cool or too uncomfortable to ask for it.

  

  Barry Zito
  • Great
  • Cool
  • Advice

• You've got to stop dividing yourselves. You got to organize.

  

  H. Rap Brown
  • You
  • Stop
  • Organize

• I'm at the point age-wise where I've decided it's time to pass the baton to people who have several terms in front of them and have the energy and the excitement and the engagement that is necessary to carry it on.

  

  Dan Coats
  • People
  • Time
  • Age

• I have always been terrified of the death of my parents. I never knew if I could count on myself. I never knew if that would send me over the edge.

  

  Dan Pallotta
  • Death
  • Parents
  • Myself

• Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precisionWhile, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incisionAnd, in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions'Hold me close', cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds.

  

  Joanna Newsom
  • Vision
  • Fire

• The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it.

  

  W. G. Sebald
  • Work
  • Great
  • Mind

• I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

  

  Yann Martel
  • Live
  • Years
  • Canada

• Mr. [John] Barrymore's smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don't.

  

  John Barrymore
  • Thinking
  • Hate
  • Mean

• I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.

  

  David Petraeus