Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you're surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.
I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.
My background is standard American blue collar of the itchy-footed variety. We're new-world mongrels. The women in the family read horoscopes, tea leaves, coffee bubbles, Tarot cards and palms.
If you are socially isolated, you are more vulnerable to stereotypes and myths; you won't have the opportunity to have conversations with someone who has a different social background than you.
According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.
I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.
It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.
I wanna make my imprint in the game as far as music - hip-hop, and just music, period. 'Cause I come from hip-hop, that's my background, but I'm not gonna let that limit me from where I can go.
I think American Ballet Theatre is setting that standard now for classical ballet, that you can dream big, and it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, what your background is.
My background was always more soulful pop. I was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and when I was a kid, I was listening to Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Joss Stone. For me, it was always about the voice.
Coming from an African background, obviously the foundation of the family home is education, probably because my parents had to work a lot harder for everything that they've got in this country.
But I would lie on the floor and analyze everything. I'd listen to all the strings and the background vocals on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and try to pick out the different instruments.
I would love to sit down and do only the ukulele with a very small crowd. I would also like to sing the super poppy songs and all the background stuff. I think both would be an interesting path.
When your dad is a preacher and your mom is a choir director and you're in church all the time, as a youngster, you've got to find something to do. That's where my musical background comes from.
I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.
When I was growing up, I always felt a bit like I didn't quite fit in, a feeling that perhaps still lingers in the background to this very day. I was the small brown girl in the big white suburb.
We did have that, in the background of the character and the show, 'Mindhorn,' set on the Isle of Man, that every episode they would have to mention the temperate microclimate of the Isle of Man.
Unfortunately, the boards of art institutions tend to be populated with well-meaning supporters of the arts who often lack any business background or appetite for imposing appropriate discipline.
I don't have any background in the industry, nobody in my family or friends. So entering into the industry and dealing with the concept of being a Bollywood music composer was daunting initially.
Some people think success is overnight. I suppose, considering I came from Australia, it has been pretty quick. But I have a background in stand-up and improv, so I've really had to prove myself.
I came from quite a free background living on this small holding farm, getting on my bike and running round the field and going on little adventures and always felt like a very independent person.
The fact that I have such a problem that people... that that has to, you know, be on people's mind, what my personal background is. To me, to be very frank with you, is a totally irrelevant thing.
I come from a very working-class background, so my family would have been downstairs in the past, as opposed to upstairs. People are often quite surprised to hear that, that I'm not actually posh.
I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music.
I had no political background. That's why PM Bhutto gave me the responsibility of the nuclear programme, and we acquired nuclear capability in a span of mere six years, which was a great milestone.
That's where I get my toughness in mind. From my background when I was young, everything I've been through, everything I was going through in my life. It helped me a lot, it helped me to be strong.
It's more fun in a way to do ensemble scenes, where you know your background, you know the scene, but you can't prepare because someone else is going to say something that is going to lead you off.
Few of my classmates looked like me. While we shared similar aspirations and many good times, there's much to be said for making any challenging journey with people of the same cultural background.
At its best, cinema does retain a remarkable ability to speak to people of every age, from every background, and in ways that almost any other art form in popular culture struggles to compete with.
Anything that keeps you happy and writing is part of my writing ritual: I like music, so I tend to have it playing in the background. But if I'm interested, I can write in an airport waiting areas.
I think that much of this was running in background as I contemplated whether or not to attend the PS 99 reunion, although I certainly anticipated that I would not; it smelled like death, not youth.
I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike. I know that because I don't come from a wealthy background.
Eventually I just want to live a normal life. I want to get married and have children and cook, wash... all the things that I do now. My background is very normal and steady, and that's what I like.
At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.
Suppose I put polka dots all over my body and then cover my background completely with polka dots. The polka dots on my body, merging with those in the background, create an optically strange scene.
Bin Laden comes out of a business background - he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise.
If anybody accuses me of being rich, I give it back to them because I had a poor economical background. I worked my way up, and I am an exemplary citizen, and I always do what is good for my nation.
A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear.
When I was a child, growing up on a council estate in the northeast of England, I imbibed enough of the background racial tensions of the late 1970s and 1980s to feel profoundly unwelcome in Britain.
Rose was sexy. It was my fantasy about her. She accomplished so much and came from so little in terms of a background that would have prepared her for the world, let alone the world of entertainment.
I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.
If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law.
Since I don't come from a privileged background, I couldn't afford to be irresponsible with career decisions. I wrote two books alongside my job and resigned only when I realised I can make a living.
This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old.
I came to accept during my freshman year that many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I'd feared.
Sometimes it's less about the character and more about the story for me. I'll play a rock in the background if I think the story is fantastic and I can be a part of it somehow. That's what I look for.
The majority of my background is multi-camera format, which is very broad and a very arch perception of reality. Whereas single camera tends to be more truthful and a little more intimate of a medium.
I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.
It is universal to give gifts as an expression of love. My academic background is anthropology, the study of cultures. We have never discovered a culture where gift-giving is not an expression of love.
They don't call it the Italian Dream or the English Dream. In America, there is the American Dream. It was the first place to give people of any social background their dream. You can achieve anything.