Don McLean Quotes

When people ask me what 'American Pie' means, I tell them it means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to.

Don McLean

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Quotes to Explore

• These rules may seem simple enough, but it will require great morale and physical courage to adhere to them. But if carried out in the strict sense of the word it will surely lead to a greater success than could otherwise be attained.

  

  Major Taylor
  • Great
  • May
  • Success

• Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.

  

  Patrick Kavanagh
  • Women
  • Song
  • Imagination

• My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Trying
  • You
  • Stop

• Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.

  

  W. Eugene Smith
  • Distance
  • Potential
  • Horizon

• How can you be on top of the things you do? I think when you are involved in a business, first of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can - the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.

  

  Carlos Slim
  • Business
  • Think
  • Numbers

• I don't look at myself as suffering.

  

  A. J. Langer
  • Myself
  • Suffering
  • Look

• Television has shied away from being too dark, because so much has happened to us recently here in the West, and people are sort of wanting to see more uplifting sorts of things.

  

  Idris Elba
  • People
  • Dark
  • Television

• Instead of hating, I have chosen to forgive and spend all of my positive energy on changing the world.

  

  Camryn Manheim
  • World
  • Energy
  • Positive

• Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration.

  

  Barbara Smith
  • Important
  • Women
  • Experience

• I think every movie is its own little world, and a director certainly sets the tone.

  

  Famke Janssen
  • World
  • Movie
  • Think

• Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doing all of this, all of the time, it'd be nice for someone else to be in charge for a bit maybe.

  

  E. L. James
  • Time
  • Children
  • Job

• I think the tone of the show has certainly changed over the years, because it's really, really hard to do something different when you have a show going on as long as this has.

  

  Dan Castellaneta
  • Different
  • Long
  • Think

• We did a lot of those road trips, all the mandatory stuff that you should when you're a kid, like Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon and the Sequoias and the western coast.

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • You
  • Road
  • Grand Canyon

• Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

  

  Oliver Goldsmith
  • Love
  • Friendship
  • For Her

• There are far too many people in university in Britain. If you want to make money, be a plumber.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • People
  • Money
  • Want

• I'm fascinated by sports, the buzz of winning, and the buzz of losing.

  

  Jack Lowden
  • Sports
  • Winning
  • Losing

• Psychoanalytic investigation has shown that in mental patients excessive affection often turns to violent hostility.

  

  Karl Abraham
  • Affection
  • Often
  • Mental

• It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion.

  

  Zora Neale Hurston
  • People
  • Body
  • Confusion

• Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.

  

  Lucretius

• I mean, the notion that we must love everything in this country or get out and go someplace else is ridiculous. I mean, if you -- the best thing a patriotic American can do is to look and be critical and find out what's wrong and try to make it better. That's what a patriotic American does.

  

  Andy Rooney
  • Country
  • Trying
  • American

• The generation of composers that are just preceded me, people like [Karlheinz] Stockhausen, [Pierre] Boulez, and, well, [John] Cage for that matter,[Morton] Feldman ... That was a kind of experimental music that was very isolated. It had no real public.

  

  Philip Glass
  • People
  • Music
  • Real

• Livable neighborhoods with a vibrant street life will stimulate our economic life as well.

  

  Gavin Newsom
  • Life
  • Economic
  • Street

• I've got a golf scholarship for school, so they understand if I'm away. A couple of years ago they called to see why I wasn't at school, and now they're like, 'oh, she's at golf.' Sometimes I'm in class and sometimes the teachers don't realize I'm there. She goes, 'oh, Lydia's absent.' And I'm like 'no, actually, I'm here.'

  

  Lydia Ko
  • School
  • Why
  • She

• When people ask me what 'American Pie' means, I tell them it means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to.

  

  Don McLean
  • People
  • Work
  • Music