Deborah Tannen Quotes
Many mothers or daughters assume that words only mean one thing. 'If I feel criticised, that has to be the whole story', and 'if I feel I am being helpful, that has to be the whole story'.
Quotes to Explore
-
I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
-
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
-
When I was younger, I wanted to marry early, like at 23. Year by year, I found things I wanted to do, and the thought of marriage disappeared. But I don't want to marry too late. Around 31?
-
I feel super lucky to be living in New York. I love the city, I love the energy. I always loved it. I had pictures of New York in my bedroom when I was young.
-
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
-
'Curvy' is just a polite way of saying 'fat.'
-
I was completely surrounded by religion from a young time. I was taught by my father. I engaged in discussions with him and many of these scholars who visited and came around the dining table, the lunch table, and attended many lectures with my dad. And so I learned the apprentice way.
-
To become the best comedian, I must be well-rounded.
-
I am not musically educated yet. I don't read - I make my own language that works for myself. But I play by ear.
-
I am ashamed to run against a lady. It's demeaning, very degrading. I have always refused to argue with a lady.
-
The worst mistake a woman can make is to emulate a man.
-
Just making the crowd laugh is not really doing things for me anymore. That's just knowing how to kill; I've learned how to kill – but also learned when a crowd's laughter is meaningful.
-
Right now the problem in Thailand is we have high debt, but we don't know how to earn the new source of revenue back to Thailand. This is my job.
-
The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.
-
I think it kind of took being a character actor to kind of now enter into leading ladies.
-
I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.
-
When we too are armed and trained, we can convince men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours;.
-
Beauty is an asset, just like physical prowess, charisma, brains or emotional intelligence. The key with any gift is in the way that you use it. It doesn't define you as a person. Rather, it's an asset to be used judiciously and with an understanding of how it is just a small part of who you are.
-
But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.
-
The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.
-
Posion' introduced lyrics for the first time. It doesn't mean anything but people can relate to those words in whichever way they choose. That started to open up other possibilities to the band, both in the terms of the gigs and on record.
-
I don't see myself as a Larry King or somebody. When you do interviews, sometimes it turns to interrogations. I'm more of a conversationalist, not throwing hardball questions.
-
Great love, like great genius, can never be a duty: both are life's gracious gifts to its elect.
-
Many mothers or daughters assume that words only mean one thing. 'If I feel criticised, that has to be the whole story', and 'if I feel I am being helpful, that has to be the whole story'.
