Abe Burrows Quotes

You throw a perfectly straight line at the audience and then, right at the end, you curve it. Good jokes do that.

Abe Burrows

• Audience
• Jokes
• Line

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Good things happen when you meet strangers.

  

  Yo-Yo Ma
  • Good
  • You
  • Good Things

• When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.

  

  Madonna Breakfast Club
  • Up
  • Free
  • Hand

• When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something; they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting.

  

  FKA twigs
  • People
  • Music
  • Thought

• A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

  

  Ovid
  • Up
  • Never
  • Horse

• Trying to think about the rest of the team over myself or my scoring is something that I never really had to do before.

  

  J. R. Smith
  • Trying
  • Team
  • Myself

• Prosperity is the measure or touchstone of virtue, for it is less difficult to bear misfortune than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

  

  Tacitus
  • Prosperity
  • Measure
  • Bear

• I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.

  

  Karen Hesse
  • Book
  • Health
  • Teacher

• Beauty pageants work as a platform from where you can reach out to many.

  

  Rakul Preet Singh
  • Work
  • Beauty
  • Platform

• I remember there being a period of time when I had a baby, and I was so sleep-deprived that I'd get into having no filter, and that was not good.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Time
  • Good
  • Remember

• What I do miss that I don't get anymore? You're going to think I'm crazy, but you want the truth, so here it is. The lights! I miss the spotlights. I don't mean it figuratively. I mean it literally. I love the feeling of lights.

  

  Barbara Mandrell
  • Love
  • Truth
  • Feeling

• Twenty is a wonderful age for things to be sparked.

  

  Oveta Culp Hobby
  • Age
  • Things
  • Wonderful

• I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.

  

  Harry Belafonte
  • People
  • Power
  • Truth

• I didn't want to just do a show where my character stood out and other characters were flat or one-to-two-dimensional. I wanted everybody to have meat.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Character
  • Want
  • Meat

• My agent called me up and said, 'There is a tremendous female lead in the new 'Star Wars' film, and I think you're really going to like it.' The opportunity to play someone determined, who's trying to find her skills as a leader; to be in a fantasy movie; to be able to do a leading female role in a film of that scale - that's very, very rare.

  

  Felicity Jones
  • Up
  • Trying
  • Movie

• Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also the place where an 8-ft. cactus, the century plant, produces a huge yellow flower every great once in a while, like a robot proffering a bouquet. After the plant flowers, it dies.

  

  Edmund White
  • Great
  • House
  • Flower

• Privacy isn't negotiable. It's the right of every American.

  

  Jackie Speier
  • American
  • Right
  • Privacy

• Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future.

  

  Sam Harris
  • War
  • Future
  • Win

• I come from a pretty strange family.

  

  Illeana Douglas
  • Family
  • Pretty
  • Strange

• Every time you work is a challenge. There's a constant worry about it, and it's a side of acting I don't like.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • Time
  • Work
  • Challenge

• Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.

  

  Steve Martin
  • People
  • Giving
  • Audience

• You throw a perfectly straight line at the audience and then, right at the end, you curve it. Good jokes do that.

  

  Abe Burrows
  • Audience
  • Jokes
  • Line