Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was tired of getting last or fifth or sixth. I was tired of falling multiple times in a program. I was tired of competing differently than how I trained. If I was going to do that, why train so hard? I took a step back, and I figured out what I wanted to change about myself.
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.
Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.
Working with other artists and writers over the past couple years has really given me a clear idea of my strengths and weaknesses and what is unique about me as an artist. I figured it's my storytelling lyrics, falsetto range and tone of voice, so I write songs to utilize those.
The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.
I was tall and skinny, and at 15, I was approached to model. I figured that models got to travel, and it became my ticket to travel so much so that if an agency could not fly me to another country, I would fly on my cost so that I could see that country and also make some money.
I remember when I fought Kevin Randleman, I was so wary about him taking me down, I figured it if he takes me down, was going to be so hard for me to get back up because he's just so good at ground and pound and keeping you on your back and it takes so much energy to get back up.
I was blessed to be able to be born here. My dad crossed. My dad illegally went through the border and was living under a bridge; he was homeless. People are making fun of him, beating him up. All kinds of things. After he kind of figured out the situation, he brought my mom over.
With 'Philharmonics,' I had to do a lot of interviews, and it was like I was corrupting something. In many ways, I've said everything in the song. And either I can't go back to what it was because it's changing when I play it, or I still haven't figured out what the song is about.
It's interesting to try to imagine how early humans discovered what was edible and what wasn't. Who figured out that when you cooked stinging nettles, the sting would go away completely? How many people had to die before the relative toxicity of wild mushrooms became widely known?
I was very insecure. I figured the only thing I can do is just work harder than everybody else and be useful. So I would anticipate when a client would need a cup of tea. I would anticipate when they wanted to rewind the tape. I would anticipate when they were going to do a vocal.
The one recurring theme in my writing, and in my life in general, is confusion. The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you're going to find out you're wrong - that is the rule. The moments where you think you have something figured out, those are the exceptions.
'TTM' started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I'd rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.
I figured, correctly, that Berlin in February was not a destination coveted by tourists. I found good airfares on Lufthansa, an airline I quite like, and got a great rate at a brand new Ritz-Carlton, which clearly hoped to seduce visitors into forsaking Hawaii for Potsdammer Platz.
We are at our best when we are at our proudest. Canadians need to harness that confidence in every arena, not just the ice rink. The Maple Leaf stands for quality, thoughtfulness, and innovation, so let's brand it proudly on the things that we've invented, created, and figured out.
The key to my perseverance was absolutely loving the craft of acting. I just figured that if I kept doing it, at the very least I would get better at acting. Even if I didn't become a tremendous success, as long as I knew I was improving and getting better, to me, that was success.
In 2008, after holding down a day job for all of six weeks, I gave up on the whole job thing to pursue an online business. At the time, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, but I figured if I was going to be broke and miserable, I might as well be while working on my own terms.
When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a writer and an artist when I grew up. So in college, I was an English major, and then I became a fine artist. But when I arrived in San Francisco in 1995, I figured I could leverage my artistic skills by becoming a Web designer and programmer.
Every show is unique, some shows have the master plan and have everything figured out and that's just the way they do things. It's like high school. Some people write their papers the second they get their assignments, and some people write it the day after it's due. I am the latter.
My parents were/are straight-edge hippies. Mom roamed around gardening so we would have fresh food, and Dad was on wood-chopping duty to heat our passive solar home that they figured out how to design and build together. I was the kid with green peppers in my lunch, and I liked them!
A lot of us lead relatively sedentary lifestyles, so you have to motivate yourself and force yourself to go to the gym and do active things. The folks that have figured it out, found that thing that they love and made it a big part of their lives, it's easy for them to stay in shape.
It occurred to me that it would benefit me to play without emotion - well, without emotion others could see, anyway. Card players profited from having a poker face so opponents wouldn't know how good or bad their hand was, and I figured a deadpan expression would work in tennis, too.
Growing up people would tell me: 'Yo, you only can do one thing. If you're going to rap, just rap. If you're going to sing, just sing.' It boxed me in. But I just figured out a way to show everything. It's like if you have a job interview, you want to present as many skills as you have.
When blue-eyed Donald Trump married hazel-eyed Ivana Zelnickova, he probably figured his broad-shouldered DNA would dominate her girly alleles. But genetics played a cruel trick on Trump: Of the couple's three children, only the youngest, Eric, wound up with his father's fishy blue eyes.
I did a lot of theater in college, and I knew that not many people make it, but I just figured, 'Well, I really want to try acting while I'm young, and I don't ever want to look back and say that I never gave it a try.' I fully figured I'd be back in grad school - probably for psychology.
Like other men, I have sought honours and preferment, and often have obtained them beyond my wishes or hopes. Yet never have I found in them that content which I had figured beforehand in my mind. A strong reason, if we well consider it, why we should disencumber ourselves of vain desires.
I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.
I do have to say, there is this incredible benefit to being older. I never thought I'd say that. I've figured out that show business isn't the end-all. I thought I'd never be tired of Hollywood, of the experience, and I have to say there's some relief. As you get older, your taste changes.
I was struck by Suu Kyi's warmth and generosity. No matter how petite she looks, she exudes amazing strength. More than anything else, I felt like I already knew her, like she was an old friend, because I'd been watching her so intently, and she was exactly what I had figured she would be.
There was a time when 'Batman' really kept me from getting some pretty good roles, and I was asked to do what I figured were important features. However, Batman was there, and very few people would take a chance on me walking onto the screen. And they'd be taking people away from the story.
My first day on the set of 'John Adams', I was just supposed to fly to Virginia for a costume fitting. But the director figured, why not shoot it, too? So they threw me into a dress that didn't fit, gave me lines I hadn't seen, in a dialect I didn't know, and two screaming, arching infants.
I feel like I'm attracted to characters who have one foot firmly planted on the ground. And their heads up in the clouds somewhere. Practical dreamers. They try to impress you that they've got this whole thing figured out, but there's more going on inside their heads than you might imagine.
During our first year, we were playing Priest and Maiden cover tunes all the time while we figured out what we wanted to do as a band. At the time I was getting out of metal and into punk. That's how Slayer's sound came together - it's the speed of punk combined with the big riffs of metal.
As a kid, I thought of myself as stupid because I needed remedial help. It was not until much later that I figured out that I was dyslexic and that my trouble with spelling and sounding out words did not mean I was stupid, but early impressions stuck with me and colored my world for a time.
In my case, I played sports my whole life. I got out of college, and I didn't bother to get health care coverage because I just figured I didn't need it. But you know that if you blow out your knee on a basketball court or you get in a car accident, and you're uninsured, it can bankrupt you.
I have 18 tattoos. My tattoos have kind of become their own person. Everybody does stories on them. It is risky to be successful in the fashion industry and to tat your body up, but I figured, the way that I made my career and the way that I am successful is because I have always been myself.
I'm unique for a suspense author in that I don't have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn't even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons - I just had to be willing to make the phone calls.
Like Netflix, Looker started as nothing more than an idea. Lloyd Tabb and Ben Porterfield were two brilliant engineers who had figured out a better way for businesses to see and analyze their data, and they asked me to join them to help out with the ABCs - that's short for Anything But Coding.
I've been traveling more and feel like I've figured out a comfortable way to do it. The biggest shift is that I spend my traveling time 'in the moment,' I don't over-schedule when I'm somewhere and instead focus on longer time with less people. I also give myself plenty of me time on the road.
I worked in a Starbucks that wasn't very popular - before the big coffee boom in London. My boss didn't take kindly to my incessant sitting. I was like, 'Look, I've dusted everything, the stockroom is all figured out... I would rather sit now so I have the energy when a customer does come in.'
I used to have all these plans and think 'Ah, I have my whole life figured out', but then I realized no matter how much I plan: life happens! So I find myself living day to day trying to do my best, embracing every moment as a learning opportunity and chance to get to know myself a little more.
I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.
I'm interested in Dathan Ritzenhein's future in the marathon, and I believe that's where we need to address some issues he seems to have. He's had good marathon coaches - both Brad Hudson and me. He's figured out the fueling. He's got this incredible aerobic engine. But something's still wrong.
Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about, but we haven't figured out how to engage the audience in that story in a meaningful way. When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience's part.
I just figured that, for me to get the best out of myself and do the right thing by myself, I really just needed to step away and find out what I really wanted to do and hopefully getting back to where my people are from and getting out bush could really re-energise me and help heal those wounds.
In August of 2011, Steve Jobs, the tech icon who disrupted a string of traditional industries, called me and told me he thought he'd figured out a way to revolutionize TV. He invited me to come see it at Apple in a few months, but he died just six weeks later, and that meeting never came to pass.
I thought, 'A biennial needs artists. I'm going to do an international biennial; I need artists from all around the world.' So what I did was I invented a hundred artists from around the world. I figured out their bios, their passions in life and their art styles, and I started making their work.
We've done that whole spectrum of different varieties of shows, and we've figured out the best way of capturing the audience and taking them to a place where they will have an experience that they will never forget, whether they don't like it, or they actually resonate with what we're trying to do.
In the early years I had no real plan. I figured it out as I went, which is easier to do when you don't have a lot of staff and overhead. Back then I believed my job was just to create great-looking shoes. That wasn't true. I learned that the shoes needed to fit, be comfortable, and not fall apart.
As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was OK to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior.