Allan Massie Quotes

Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.

Allan Massie

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Quotes to Explore

• All performers get on stage because they need to feel love from an audience. I might appear confident, but those three seconds before I get out there, I'm a mess. But I have to take the risk; otherwise, I'd be miserable and would feel like I wasn't seeing through my personal destiny.

  

  Idina Menzel
  • Risk
  • Feel
  • Audience

• It's hard to have people talking about you and trashing you in the media and saying they think your career is over... and you are only 25.

  

  Tamra Davis
  • People
  • Career
  • Media

• I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.

  

  Harold Prince
  • People
  • Different
  • Remember

• Looking up and out, how can we not respect this ever-vigilant cognizance that distinguishes us: the capability to envision, to dream, and to invent? the ability to ponder ourselves? and be aware of our existence on the outer arm of a spiral galaxy in an immeasurable ocean of stars? Cognizance is our crest.

  

  Vanna Bonta
  • Up
  • Dream
  • Knowledge

• It's like you have a child and you think, 'Everything that I've done up until this point is insignificant in comparison to being a father.' It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

  

  Vin Diesel
  • Up
  • Done
  • Father

• I think if you talk to my colleagues, I was less than a fearsome individual.

  

  Karl Rove
  • Think
  • Talk
  • Colleagues

• There are so many different criteria for my collecting, and I have to confess that the goalposts do shift. But obviously, with my background, I am particularly drawn to things that have been documented in contemporary magazines.

  

  Hamish Bowles
  • Magazines
  • Collecting
  • Shift

• I know you can be up one minute and drop the next, so I'm trying to maintain a steady course so I can have some longevity.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Up
  • Trying
  • Know

• I just want to be part of great stories that are told and for them to be relevant.

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Great
  • Want
  • Just

• I was afraid I would see someone from my past who thought I was this big athlete, and then I end up being just normal.

  

  Victor Cruz
  • Up
  • Past
  • Thought

• I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.

  

  Said Sayrafiezadeh
  • People
  • Truth
  • History

• We use the same possessive pronouns for everything, but do we own our lives or sisters or husbands in the same way we own our shoes? Do we own any of them at all?

  

  Samantha Harvey
  • Way
  • Shoes
  • Same

• I'm an Oscar nominee. I love saying that. Whatever happens, I'm going to sing that 'I'm an Oscar nominee' part.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Love
  • Happens
  • Saying

• Unless you work for '60 Minutes', your life is: You do stories about things, and nothing happens as a result.

  

  Ira Glass
  • Life
  • Work
  • You

• I'm in love with music, and I'm pregnant by it. It's like having twins. Or triplets. Or eight-lets!

  

  R. Kelly
  • Music
  • Love
  • Like

• I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • World
  • Children
  • Done

• I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • Different
  • Power
  • Process

• There's definitely something transformative about clothes.

  

  Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • Something
  • Clothes

• Today, you have achieved something special, something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I'm talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg.

  

  Conan O'Brien
  • Age
  • Today
  • College

• The Green Berets of U.S. Special Forces 5th Group - known as 'the Legion' - who led the anti-Taliban campaign represent a textbook case of a successful Special Forces campaign.

  

  Peter Bergen
  • Green

• The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters' most shameless ideological instincts.

  

  Bret Stephens
  • Trump
  • Shameless

• I've been through heartbreak and uncertainty and giddy crushes and everything. We all have.

  

  Anna Faris
  • Heartbreak

• Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.

  

  Allan Massie
  • Live
  • Today
  • Society