William Lyon Phelps Quotes
The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent of things, but be a part of personality [and character].
Quotes to Explore
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Right now, I'm at the top of the world in my game so my focus isn't on when I'm going to end. My focus is on playing the best tennis that I can, and there is no end to that.
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I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men's clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.
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During the fall and winter we built Fort Meade and the town of Sturgis.
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Knowing constitutional law helps one at the opera. The trial in 'Billy Budd,' as example, invokes the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. Constitution.
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I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
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As an actor, I've always said, half the audience is going to love you, half is going to hate you so just live with it. It's easier that way.
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It gets pretty boring when all you are is the support system for a male character.
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If you are in this business long enough, you hear about a thousand things that are going to kill you. Open source? Yeah, we are not dead yet. Cloud? That's not new; it's a new name.
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When you give a lot of confidence in people and you don't get it back, you are a bit disappointed, but it's life.
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My hair and my accent are sort of my main assets.
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I came from Yale, where you get an extracurricular degree in self-importance because you went there. When AIDS happened, I was treated like an outcast. And I don't like that feeling.
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I like a twisted sense of humour. On 'A History of Violence,' David Cronenberg and I would be doing the grimmest scenes and laugh a lot.
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The same way you can see me sit at a table in a movie and be six different people, the mother and the uncle and all these different things, when I'm in the studio, I can do that, too. I'm not trying to be a recording artist and have a certain type of music for the radio.
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I'd love to have William Faulkner, Beethoven and Bach over. I want to find out what makes those guys tick!
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I'd like to work with Bjork if I could get in the studio with her. We could probably travel to a different planet, you know what I'm saying?
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When I grew up, I thought I was Jewish. Now I don't consider myself Jewish. I consider myself a Kabbalist.
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I don't make resolutions, because resolutions seem so ephemeral and transient to go away.
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There's something unnatural about losing a sibling when they're young.
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All dogs seem to be great linguists, according to their owners. They always understand every word that's said to them.
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My mom played tennis for, like, six hours a day and went to college on a tennis scholarship, because that was the way she could go to school. So they instilled in me the idea that you have to work hard for the things you want in life and never complain.
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I've never gotten hired for drama because I'm a good improviser. I don't think people who write drama scripts want you playing with them as much.
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The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).
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The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent of things, but be a part of personality [and character].
