John Knoll Quotes
I've been on lots of movies where we've done a lot of planning of sets - how much you build, and is this big enough, and will this get us what we need? - just with foam-core models.
Quotes to Explore
-
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
-
In writing about Harold and Maureen with their terrible unspoken secret, and all those people that Harold meets as he walks to save a friend's life, I was trying to celebrate the ordinary people.
-
I like someone with a really good and dark sense of humour.
-
Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.
-
My books have contradictions all the time - and people are fine with that.
-
I think Teach for America has suffered from the fact that I did not teach, in a major way. I also think if I had taught, I wouldn't have started Teach for America.
-
I'm a terrific mimic, and you can feel my funny bone.
-
I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels - more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.
-
Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs.
-
In school, I had a tough time fitting in, and dancing was my way of being in my own element. As a teenager, I became a bit disillusioned with it. Even with competitions, I'd win, but still there would be tears.
-
I can watch a movie and go, 'Oh, my god, that person is acting.' If you just listen to what the other person is saying, your response will always be genuine.
-
I guess one that wouldn't be obvious is - well, maybe it's super obvious, I can't tell - 'I Love Lucy' is my favorite show, going back to when I was 4. I've watched every episode I don't know how many times. It was something to watch women being funny when I was young.
-
The daily calendar seemed, to me, like a kind of cartoon black hole, and you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that that couldn't be sustained indefinitely. That's why I pulled the plug on that one after the '02 edition. Kind of a preemptive strike.
-
Almost all Iraqis with any previous experience in the intelligence business are Sunni Arab, increasing the risk of penetration of the new intelligence apparatus by the insurgency.
-
Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.
-
My involvement with Guantanamo began as vice chief of staff.
-
I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.
-
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
-
When people laugh at me, they are not laughing in the way that they normally would at a comedian. They are laughing with relief, because the truth has been spoken, and political correctness has not strangled this particular gigastar.
-
Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.
-
I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.
-
Without a constant livelihood, there will be no constant heart.
-
When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.
-
I've been on lots of movies where we've done a lot of planning of sets - how much you build, and is this big enough, and will this get us what we need? - just with foam-core models.
