Every accepted public quote

“I express myself using my classical skills to write more complex forms of popular music.”

“I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way l...”

“I've always been a proud man.”

“I wanted to tour the United States because I feel I owe it to the community that I grew up in. When I was growing up, the only people I saw on TV were Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Jet Li. Our r...”

“My enthusiasms ... constitute my reserves, my unexploited resources, perhaps my future.”

“The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence...”

“Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to the football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the...”

“Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so tha...”

“You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very distur...”

“The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”

“Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.”

“I like to describe my stuff as observational comedy.”

“Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.”

“Very old music is, like, 11th century in my mind. That's very old.”

“My brain is just so busy. I'm inattentive; I'm a daydreamer: the space cadet kind.”

“The sea is the universal sewer.”

“I would like to say a few things about that photo in 'Tatler'. I have no regrets. The article was about the 20 cleverest people in England, covered up only by the thing that makes them cleve...”

“If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.”

“Modern slavery is a barbaric crime. Each and every case is a both a tragedy and an affront to our values of decency and kindness.”

“I have a great work ethic - from watching Lucille Ball, not necessarily my own family.”

“People who tend to listen to my music have come back and said, 'Yo, this is my anthem. This is what I live by.'”

“I drink no more than a sponge.”

“The Tao teaches us to let go of things. Use the 80/20 rule. If you take all your clothes, you'll find out that you only wear 20 percent of them. Take what you have and don't use and circulat...”

“Ski racing is not about how much you weigh. If weight was the key, everybody would be sucking down food.”

“I believe there are several conservative democrats who are prepared to join Republicans in opposition to measures that propose new entitlements and reparations.”

“There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interes...”

“I never trashed a hotel room or did drugs.”

“What Andrew Cuomo said is, truly, a scandal. It's a scandal if he actually thinks it - that those who hold conservative views on abortion, gun rights and marriage are extreme, anathema and h...”

“The industry's not stupid. The industry knows that if those foods are labeled 'genetically engineered', the public will shy away and won't take them.”

“I collect lucky pennies that I find on the ground. I keep them in a Ziploc bag.”

“I cannot support an indefinite backstop arrangement where the E.U. holds a veto over our ability to exit.”

“When I act as a translator, I am really doing a performance for my fellow Anglophone readers in the West.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, if you're straight with the press, they'll be straight with you.”

“When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”

“One way to think of the tax system is as a massive Swiss cheese. Each hole is an exemption created by a chancellor in pursuit of good headlines - a hole waiting to be filled by the clever ac...”

“I unfortunately still crave chicken McNuggets and bacon, which is the meat candy of the world.”

“You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the north who said to me, 'When did you leave the IRA?'”

“When I entered free agency, I said whatever team I end up on, I'm going to work.”

“I think some people think I'm a smarty-pants. Some people think I'm intense, some people think I'm super-esoteric and nuts.”

“There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.”

“When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking...”

“In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China.”

“I want to learn. I deserve to read and write. Thoughts for company, and a pen for a voice. Who is more entitled to those privileges than I?”

“When I got the 'Blue Album,' I was 11 years old, 10 years old, and then I convinced my parents to go and get my first drum kit, which was, like, 600 bucks.”

“My decision to come to Bell Telephone Laboratories immediately after obtaining my Ph.D. in 1936 was strongly influenced by the fact that my supervisor would be C. J. Davisson.”

“Ninety-eight per cent of all human communication is non-verbal.”

“I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.”

“I love exercise, but I find it boring doing the same thing all the time, so I fluctuate between going to the gym, doing Pilates, and taking dance lessons.”