Stephen Sondheim Quotes
If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
Quotes to Explore
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At one level, an award is an endorsement, a confirmation, but I always find myself looking askance at awards and good reviews, as though another Garry Disher had earned them.
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I just feel so flattered, because the cosplayers really make sure every detail is there. I don't think I've ever cosplayed a character before, but if I were to, I'd probably go as a Klingon from 'Star Trek.'
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When I was in high school in the early 1970s, we knew we were running out of oil; we knew that easy sources were being capped; we knew that diversifying would be much better; we knew that there were terrible dictators and horrible governments that we were enriching who hated us. We knew all that and we did really nothing.
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But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.
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'Wicked' gave us a story that 'The Wizard of Oz' did not. Two sides to every story.
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My grandparents don't really listen to pop music, and they only speak Spanish and only listen to Spanish music.
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Our current identification system is so disjointed that the World Trade Center terrorists had a total of 63 valid driver's licenses between them.
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Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
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The first songs I learned was 'Crazy' by Patsy Cline and 'At Last' by Etta James. I had been growing up with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, great bands.
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I'm an actor, so I like costumes.
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I would get up at 3 in the morning and write. Or sometimes I would write at midnight. Or I would write when my child napped. It wasn't a burden. I was so enthused about what I was doing at the time that I really didn't mind.
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What's popular in places considered ghettos - whether that's the inner city or Appalachia - is having a decent quality of life.
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No, I'm not coaching. It's a huge responsibility to coach somebody.
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If you asked me to go back to being 14 or 15, I couldn't - it was a terrifying time. I was so awkward in my own skin. I used to hide behind my hair because I was so ridiculously self-conscious.
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When you're an entertainer, it's hard not to compare yourself with the next person's success. But you have to trust your own journey and your strengths and believe in yourself. I think that's the best place to start.
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NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.
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I wasn't brought up with any religion, actually.
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One of my clearest impressions about India as a child was that my parents' stories would have been impossible had they stayed. Of course, such a vision was self-serving, for it made a virtue of our displacement.
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I talk to our kids now that they are grown up, and I ask them about the experiences that had growing up that really had a powerful influence on the way they view the purpose of life. The experiences that really shaped their values - my wife and I have no memory of those experiences!
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I'm a mix of a 14-year-old high schooler and a 60-year-old guy. It can never fall into the 30s or the 40s. It has to be 100 percent 60 or 100 percent 14, no in between.
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First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
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Trouble and prayer are closely related. Trouble often drives men to God in prayer, while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.
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I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
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If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
