John Niven Quotes

The mechanic could lift up the bonnet of the car and show me four dwarves strapped to a pair of tandems and tell me that the motor was actually dwarf-powered and that one of the little fellows had to be replaced, and I'd just be numbly writing out a cheque and scribbling 'new dwarf - car' on the stub.

John Niven

• Up
• Writing
• Car

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.

  

  Dale Carnegie
  • Life
  • Attention
  • Never

• I want 'The Lady' magazine to be restored to its traditional place in the pantheon of weekly magazines.

  

  Rachel Johnson
  • Want
  • Place
  • Lady

• It ultimately becomes an asset to be part of a theatrical family if, indeed, you're good at what you do.

  

  Kate Burton
  • Good
  • Family
  • You

• If you behave normally, people treat you normally. It's only when you act as if you're someone special that they feel obliged to stand on ceremony.

  

  Victoria Wood
  • People
  • Stand
  • Treat

• Whenever a film allows you to think and feel and take it beyond the moment, I think it's achieved something. And 'Funny Games' does that.

  

  Naomi Watts
  • Think
  • Funny
  • Moment

• The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.

  

  J. William Fulbright
  • Power
  • Feeling
  • Kind

• If you look at the very best presidents, the most effective presidents, they were always decent salespeople. Ronald Reagan was an extremely effective salesman, very tuned to the people he was selling to, very clear in what he was selling, very resilient and buoyant.

  

  Dan Pink
  • People
  • Best
  • Look

• There's layers to our stuff: Our top layer is like candy-coated pop, because we want to party and have a nice time, but we also have a lot of different human experiences and other levels present in the Die Antwoord experience.

  

  Watkin Tudor Jones
  • Time
  • Different
  • Experience

• All of us are trying to achieve 100 percent in our work. That's all we struggle to do. We never do, but we never stop trying until the day we die. It's that struggle to achieve 100 percent, that's where our performance lies, that's what the audience gets. They get the struggle.

  

  Vincent D'Onofrio
  • Work
  • Trying
  • Stop

• When you're shooting a TV show, there's not a lot of time to build character.

  

  Candice Patton
  • Time
  • Character
  • You

• My biggest influences as an actor were Marlon Brando, and I really dug James Dean.

  

  Larry Bishop
  • Actor
  • Influences
  • Were

• I miss driving to Goodison Park. I miss just the positive energy of the fans walking into the stadium and how much they care about that club and the team. And I miss the players a lot.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Energy
  • Team
  • Positive

• Music is pretty intimate stuff and I can only work with very few people: Gonzalez being one, Mocky being another and, on a completely different level, Broken Social Scene. With Broken Social Scene it's not one-on-one, it's a one-on-12. It's very healthy, very comfortable, like a big pot luck supper among old friends.

  

  Feist
  • People
  • Work
  • Music

• Luckily, I have been offered the chance to play a South American, Hispanic and even a character from the Middle East in films. There are also a lot of TV series in the U.S. that have a strong presence of actors from India.

  

  Madhur Mittal
  • Character
  • American
  • Strong

• If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Life
  • Long
  • Wait

• Women often come up not knowing how to make decisions. We get wishy-washy. We become great wage earners - breadwinners - but we don't know how to control empires.

  

  Jackee Harry
  • Up
  • Great
  • Women

• The fact is that in too many communities in cities in Britain gangs now have become completely rooted into these communities and they destroy them around them.

  

  Iain Duncan Smith
  • Now
  • Become
  • Destroy

• I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

  

  Nat King Cole
  • Me
  • Hurt
  • Thought

• To be a film-maker, you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different.

  

  Danny Boyle
  • People
  • Different
  • Desire

• If I'm extra happy or excited, it'll take me an hour or two to write a song. Or, if I'm really sad or something, it will take me about a day. But I have a specific way of writing: I just listen to the beat. I think about what I'm going to write over the beat.

  

  Astro
  • Writing
  • Happy
  • Song

• I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue.

  

  David Benioff
  • Writing
  • Weird

• The difficult part of writing about someone you don't admire is that it's easy to demonize them. What you get then is a cackling villain, twirling their mustache at every dastardly deed they commit.

  

  Andrew Shaffer
  • Writing
  • Admire
  • Villain

• Part of us believes the new car is better because it lasts longer. But, in fact, that's the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you, whereas a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory.

  

  Daniel Gilbert
  • Good
  • Car
  • Memory

• The mechanic could lift up the bonnet of the car and show me four dwarves strapped to a pair of tandems and tell me that the motor was actually dwarf-powered and that one of the little fellows had to be replaced, and I'd just be numbly writing out a cheque and scribbling 'new dwarf - car' on the stub.

  

  John Niven
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Car