Alexander Payne Quotes
They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you're given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist - when you're relevant. And I'm aware of that, and I don't want my time to go by.

Quotes to Explore
-
I wish the world could better know this country for what it really is. Not just a greedy economic giant crouching fearfully behind its walls, not just a panoplied warrior nervously fingering his weapons. What is this, is a people who gather together in thousands to give a people's government its essential vitality.
-
The only thing worse than an active conscience is one that's retroactive.
-
Why did I elope with my husband after knowing him for only four months? I wish I could show people the picture of the two of us that night and have them feel what I felt. But it's just a picture. It can only capture how things looked, not how they felt.
-
There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.
-
I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.
-
I wear tweed jackets and button-down shirts. I am a 1955 graduate of Harvard University who drives a 1968 Mercedes.
-
The biggest rival I had in my career was me. I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me.
-
Movies are really hard to make. You put a lot of work into them, and you want people to see them.
-
Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.
-
I find it slightly absurd that the only thing we consume more of than water is concrete.
-
If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed. Remember: teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions.
-
Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.
-
Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live.
-
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
-
Seasonal flu is now a pandemic that lasts for years and years because you've got so many people that it's jumping back between northern and southern hemispheres and moving itself around the world. By the time it gets back to where it started, it's changed sufficiently so that people are no longer immune.
-
I have no doubt that Brian May would have had a brilliant career in science had he completed his Ph.D. in 1971.
-
But with two boys and a new puppy, we don't get out much. We're usually home doing stuff together as a family, like watching 'Modern Family.'
-
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
-
We were watching bands like the Ramones and Blondie and other bands beginning to ignite.
-
Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.
-
Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.
-
I do think from time to time that conceptual questions arise: What do we mean by equilibrium? What do we mean by this concept and that concept?
-
Competitive feeling means you want do do good work. You can't lie about wanting to be on top. There is no reason for me to be insecure at this time. I would be insecure if I was sitting at home doing nothing, but I am in films now, and that's where I always wanted to be.
-
They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you're given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist - when you're relevant. And I'm aware of that, and I don't want my time to go by.