Claire Tomalin Quotes

Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.

Claire Tomalin

• Nature

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Quotes to Explore

• I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.

  

  Xun Kuang
  • Up
  • High
  • See

• The thing that I have to stay away from is sweets. I have a horrible sweet tooth. It's just the worst.

  

  Daniel Bryan
  • Sweet
  • Worst
  • Sweets

• Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

  

  Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould
  • Time
  • Civilization
  • Taste

• I think that when we strip people down, most of us want the same things. People just have very different views of how to get there.

  

  Dan Gilbert
  • People
  • Different
  • Think

• I saw Mercury Prize-winners Alt-J for the first time recently, touring their debut album 'An Awesome Wave,' and I'm still riding the high: they're the most musically dynamic and exciting band to have poured tune into my lug holes live since Bellowhead.

  

  Dan Stevens
  • Time
  • Live
  • High

• There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

  

  Abel Ferrara
  • Thing
  • Director
  • Cut

• I was working at the NSA. I don't know, I was just bored. I just knew that's not what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

  

  Wanda Sykes
  • Life
  • Doing
  • My Life

• I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late.

  

  Utada Hikaru
  • Literature
  • Missing
  • Japanese

• I've always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me.

  

  Kaskade
  • Music
  • Passion
  • Thought

• All I did was ask for rights. I didn't attack anyone. I didn't harass anyone. I didn't oppose the system or the country or the authority. All I said is, 'Why can't I drive?'

  

  Manal al-Sharif
  • Country
  • Why
  • Said

• The idea of it becomes a little freaky if you're dealing with someone who has trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality, but that's a concern no matter what kind of movie you're dealing with.

  

  Adam Arkin
  • Movie
  • Reality
  • Kind

• That image is a couple different people's homes that I knew growing up.

  

  Zach Braff
  • People
  • Up
  • Different

• I have a different way of thinking. I think synergistically. I'm not linear in thinking, I'm not very logical.

  

  Imelda Marcos
  • Different
  • Thinking
  • Think

• I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • World
  • Old
  • Jazz

• When you get successful, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

  

  Randy Bachman The Guess Who
  • Pretty
  • Want
  • You

• I learned a lot from the various artists I produced. Either you see them doing something that you do want to do it, or you see them doing something the way you don't want to do it.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • Want
  • Doing
  • See

• I actually was the captain of the football team. I went to Catalina Foothills High School, and I played football all four years. I started on Varsity my sophomore year, and senior year I was captain.

  

  Parker Young
  • School
  • High
  • Team

• You can't sit here and try to predict what kind of character I'm going to be drawn to next. At the time when I read 'The Girl on the Train,' it wasn't like I was, 'Ooh, I want to play a hot mess next.'

  

  Haley Bennett
  • Time
  • Character
  • Girl

• Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.

  

  Sidney Altman
  • Nature
  • Government
  • Study

• I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

  

  Harper Lee
  • Think
  • Kind
  • Just

• The main consideration with those who, possessing some capital, propose to emigrate as the means of improving their condition, is, the society likely to be found in the land fixed on for their future residence.

  

  Charles Sturt
  • Future
  • Society

• The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for it shape and comfort.

  

  Denis Diderot
  • Different
  • Animal

• There is a certain manner of self-absorption in speaking that always renders the speaker disagreeable. For it is as great a folly to listen only to ourselves while we are carrying on a conversation with others as it is to talk to ourselves while we are alone.

  

  Madeleine de Souvre
  • Great
  • Alone
  • Listening

• Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.

  

  Claire Tomalin
  • Nature