John Niven Quotes

The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'

John Niven

• Money
• Book
• Teenager

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Quotes to Explore

• Don't assume that the answers are out there in the form of somebody else already doing something. Sometimes they are. But you have to think beyond that.

  

  Abigail Johnson
  • Think
  • Sometimes
  • Doing

• I'm awful with directions, and I'm not very handy around the house.

  

  Taye Diggs
  • House
  • Very
  • Directions

• I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America.

  

  Tawni O'Dell
  • People
  • America
  • Small

• If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Writing
  • Kids
  • Die

• Insight enables you make sure you don't allow negative beliefs to get permanently set in your thinking - just the same way you wouldn't want fractured bones to be permanently set into place.

  

  Karen Salmansohn
  • Thinking
  • Want
  • Negative

• I'm consistently telling stories about the value of the human condition and connectedness and things like that.

  

  J. H. Wyman
  • Value
  • Things
  • Human

• I have never spoken to Eminem. I've never even spoken to him once.

  

  Bebe Rexha
  • Never
  • Him
  • Even

• If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Reading
  • Like
  • Hearing

• The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.

  

  Nancy Allen
  • God
  • Love
  • Funny

• Every project has to stand on its own. It's a different identity within each project, and I feel like that's the way it should be.

  

  Vince Staples
  • Different
  • Identity
  • Stand

• I can go to a country song, go right into it and make it sound authentic. And I think that's because of my ear as an impressionist.

  

  Eddie Murphy
  • Country
  • Think
  • Song

• Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

  

  Walt Disney
  • Different
  • Job
  • Language

• I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

  

  Barry Hannah
  • Time
  • Work
  • Writing

• I've always gone for the more sensitive, bookish guy, totally. The jock boys, the sporty guys, I don't know... they just didn't do it for me.

  

  Laura Ramsey
  • Guy
  • Know
  • Me

• The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

  

  Washington Allston
  • Man
  • Wise
  • Competition

• I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating.

  

  Patrick Wang
  • Time
  • Find
  • Strange

• I can't deal with someone flashy. That's so not me.

  

  Kate Bosworth
  • Me
  • Deal
  • Someone

• I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy said: 'Idiot, just put a flat on the third line and it's a key signature, you know?'

  

  Quincy Jones
  • Guy
  • Funny
  • Silly

• I was on the board of Andre Agassi's foundation, and seeing the way it operated blew my mind. In 2002, I told my wife, I want to start a foundation to give back, I want it to be for kids in hard circumstances, and I want it to be culinary-driven, because that's who I am.

  

  Emeril Lagasse
  • Mind
  • Kids
  • Wife

• When I started out, there was so much work that I couldn't think of doing anything else. I would go for recordings by 8.30 A.M., that, too, in trains. I used to come home at night. I was travelling alone everywhere.

  

  Lata Mangeshkar
  • Work
  • Home
  • Night

• I believe that you should do what you know how to do best.

  

  Carlos Beruff
  • Believe

• Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

  

  Konrad Lorenz
  • Truth
  • Science

• The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'

  

  John Niven
  • Money
  • Book
  • Teenager