Quotes on Things

Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.

Fame allows you a lot of opportunities to experience new things and connect with people. But on the other hand, people's perceptions of you can limit the scope of your relationships with them. You walk both lines.

If I go to the museum and see white bodies, black bodies, Asian bodies, Latino bodies, then I will expect to see those things every time I go. That matters a lot.

I do wish, when I was younger, that I knew that I was gay. It would have made things a lot clearer for me. Really. Looking back on it, it was so obvious, but it never really dawned on me. Socially, I felt like I didn't know how to be and who to be. If I had known back then, it would have given me more self-confidence.

One of the hard things coming from an immigrant family - or any family that doesn't believe in the arts - is that you have to disappoint your parents. That's hard for people to do if you're a good kid.

An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

One of the things you can always depend on - this is one of the truths of the universe, and you heard it first from here - whatever we decide we want to do is what we do.

Every time I hear a recording I've made, I hear all kinds of things I could improve or things I should have done. There's always so much more to be done in music. It's so vast.

In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing plays.

My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.

There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.

People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.

To be in a position, at my age, where I am financially independent, I can help develop things, I can promote stuff that I believe in, I can say no a lot and spend time writing - that is a gift.

We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

I think I'm happier, not just because of winning Grammys and selling records, but because it's really fulfilling to have all these things happen with something you love to do.

Naturally it is nice to be widely known for worthwhile achievements, but it forces you to do many things which you don't like to do and these things take up time you want for other things.