Claire Tomalin Quotes

All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

Claire Tomalin

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• We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

  

  Walter Savage Landor
  • Think
  • Reality
  • Self-Love

• Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Business
  • Humanity
  • Movies

• I feel nowadays a lot of bands can be too overly produced. There's something about the leather pants and bare bodies and Axl Rose running back and forth on a stage and going crazy. I love all that.

  

  Malin Akerman
  • Crazy
  • Feel
  • Stage

• Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

  

  J. Robert Oppenheimer
  • Man
  • Years
  • Errors

• Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lord, they're not going to want to go here'. But they do. Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave.

  

  Barbara Kingsolver
  • Time
  • World
  • Reality

• I changed that system in Florida when I was the Speaker of the House - I was the Minority Leader; I saw for 16 years the way a power system works.

  

  Dan Webster
  • Power
  • House
  • Leader

• Let's say I was a plumber, or I worked at a factory, I would download music, you feel what I'm saying?

  

  Obie Trice
  • Music
  • You
  • Saying

• I have always looked up to Adele and Christina Aguilera as singers ever since I was very young, and now my favorite male singer is Hozier.

  

  Sabrina Carpenter
  • Up
  • Always
  • Young

• I have seen the future, and it is much like the present, only longer.

  

  Dan Quisenberry
  • Future
  • Like
  • Present

• I went from being a jock to a hippie. It was a very clear-cut decision. I had to be one or the other. I had to forsake that other aspect of myself. Or thought that I had to, which is regrettable. Quickly, I was back in the pine trees with the hippies, listening to my Jimi Hendrix and my Janis Joplin and turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.

  

  J. K. Simmons
  • Myself
  • Decision
  • Listening

• The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

  

  Barbara Kingsolver
  • Life
  • Live
  • Hope

• When I was a teenager, reading for me was as normal, as unremarkable as eating or breathing. Reading gave flight to my imagination and strengthened my understanding of the world, the society I lived in, and myself. More importantly, reading was fun, a way to live more than one life as I immersed myself in each good book I read.

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • Life
  • World
  • Good

• Our evolution could have gone in different directions a lot of times. We could have gone extinct at some points. We might not have gotten our big brains, or Neanderthals might have made it while we did not.

  

  Sam Kean
  • Different
  • Evolution
  • Brains

• You realize when you're pregnant how lucky you are to have access to medical care.

  

  Olivia Wilde
  • Care
  • Lucky
  • Medical

• First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm.

  

  Adam McKay
  • Funny
  • Comedy
  • Doing

• I'd say it's even harder to cater to Hispanics than to the lesbian or gay community. We're so culturally separated: Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Venezuelans. We're all so different.

  

  Carlos Ponce
  • Different
  • Community
  • Gay

• My very first job was a cashier at Burger King in Tucson, Arizona. And I occasionally worked the drive-thru. I'd go wherever I was needed! My second job was at Dairy Queen. I stayed in the fast food royalty.

  

  Kate Walsh
  • Job
  • Food
  • King

• Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • Sin
  • Lie
  • Tools

• Our original name was Wild Country, but when we first went to The Bowery, they had the name of all 50 states around the edge of the club, so we went to the sign that said 'Alabama' and stuck our band name underneath it.

  

  Randy Owen
  • Country
  • Band
  • Name

• If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.

  

  Barack Obama
  • People
  • Job
  • Lost

• I just am who I am. And then when people label me eccentric or different, I'm kind of astonished because I think, 'This is completely normal. This is just how I am, it's how I've always been.'

  

  Daphne Guinness
  • People
  • Different

• Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn't have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can't practice Ashtanga yoga.

  

  K. Pattabhi Jois
  • People
  • Men
  • Practice

• If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

  

  Willem Dafoe
  • People
  • Character
  • Giving

• All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

  

  Claire Tomalin
  • People