I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but I very often like the way Europeans make movies. I think sometimes that don't they care about having to clean certain things.

I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence.

When I say I want to become a legend, some people say it's pretentious. For me, it's a challenge. My desire, a dream. I'm not saying I'll get there, but it's what I want.

Being in the spotlight, you know, you tend to kind of forget who you are. And being an artist... it could be a very superficial job. It could be very pretentious as well.

It's quite pretentious, really, isn't it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

There are some people I've met and it's stressful just speaking to them, because they're really pretentious and I don't know how to talk to them without being pretentious back.

I think some period drama can be quite alienating, but 'Downton' isn't. This is going to sound quite, um, pretentious, but someone said that it's like a soap written by a poet.

Fashion is a little bit pretentious. Whereas I feel like movies are just fun. That's just my perspective, based off my experiences, obviously everyone has different experiences.

I do and re-do things that I used to do in a flash, because I want to be more perfectionist about these things. Maybe it sounds pompous and pretentious, but that's the way I feel.

She's not pretentious at all. I love that about her. I mean, she's this giant icon, but then she's just this little bohemian chick in Ugg boots and sweats. Sadly, Cher is only human.

Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself.

I don't mean this to sound pretentious but I think that artists of all kinds are a rung up the ladder of the spiritual heirarchy, and for me there is something very religious about music.

After the many rumours that we had heard about Hitler and the published criticisms we had read about him, we were pleasantly impressed. His appearance was neither pretentious nor affected.

It's very hard to get pretentious about beer. You can become knowledgeable and start to talk with a highfalutin' vocabulary. But you can only go so far with beer, and I've always liked that.

I never personalize anything because I think that can be dangerous. For me, the best way is - this may sound pretentious - but it's to breathe the character and get into the psychology of it.

If talking about arts means being pretentious, a bit like being a wine critic, then I don't feel comfy with that. You can get a lot from paintings without getting mystical about brush strokes.

I actually didn't think I was going to do TV because I don't really watch TV. I'm a little bit pretentious, and I do these little indie movies, so I envisioned that more as the path for myself.

I'm not trying to influence anyone else; I'm not saying, 'Do what I do.' I think it's a little pretentious to say, 'I'm a role model'; I would never say that, and I don't think of myself that way.

I remember films I made at university, which are unbelievably pretentious. Poetry that I'd written that I delivered to camera, against a Venetian blind, strong shadows, looking slightly off-camera.

I never watch TV. I know I'm missing so much, aren't I? I'm probably not. I can't stand popular TV. I've got too much to do to watch it. I know that sounds pretentious and pompous, but there you are.

I know it sounds really precious and pretentious, but I can't actually remember deciding to want to be an actor. I just knew that I had too many feelings and I had to kind of get them out in some way.

As an actor, you are used to portraying other characters. You can pick up any mannerism or body language that suits the character. But to be yourself and not look pretentious is a difficult thing to do.

What's happened to society is we've become really pretentious. But there was a time in my life where I really had to choose between boiling potatoes and paying my gas bill, so I'd buy a can of potatoes.

I don't want to sound pretentious or meta or anything, but I don't write until it comes to me... People know when something is inspired and when something is not, and I don't want to waste anyone's time.

It sounds pretentious to say I 'divide' my time, but when I am home, that usually means my house in Atlanta or my cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. The latter is where I do the majority of my writing.

Ever since I was a small child, I've had this feeling - it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious - that if everyone's going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

Sometimes I might go too far with the pretentious references, which I might not do again. But when you're writing, you're sitting alone in a room so you're writing to amuse yourself as much as anybody else.

I feel like there's an obligation - this sounds terribly pretentious - if you're an artist, to share your own experience in a way that's truthful and honest: 'This is what I have to share; this is my life.'

I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

I've learned through experience of playing different characters, some of whom were jerks, that when you play a character who is pretentious or obnoxious, in any way, it's important to knock them down a peg.

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.

I think, you know, as an actor we get these terribly sort of pretentious ideas in our heads. We try to take everything very seriously at first, you know, until we lighten up, we get onboard, and have a laugh.

My actual biggest claim to fame is that - basically, this sounds awful and really pretentious - but my Twitter is verified. And if you're already verified on Twitter, then your Vine is automatically verified.

It's good to get stage fright. It is necessary to be scared, otherwise you have too much confidence in yourself and you start to get pretentious and do shitty things. It's good to not be so confident in yourself.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people.

I've never been what they call a 'pure gallerist.' I find that somewhat pretentious, honestly - I'm an art dealer. I like to show great artists of our time, but I also like dealing. And I think they reinforce each other.

I look at myself more as a storyteller than a screenwriter, as pretentious as that may sound, but that's what really attracts me to TED Talks. For me, the really effective ones are being presented by expert storytellers.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

I am not a performing seal. In your writing, you are tapping into the part that is 'the best' in you. But what you are also filters through in your writing your prejudices, your bitterness. I am not a pretentious person.

All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.

It kind of sounds pretentious, but a film I find deeply romantic is 'Buffalo '66,' which is a film by Vincent Gallo. It's about how you break down all those barriers and expose yourself and open yourself up to ultimately being hurt.

I just love real characters; they're not pretentious, and every emotion is on the surface, they're regular working people. Their likes, their dislikes, their loves, their hates, their passions; they're all right there on the surface.

Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.

Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.

I'd love to do a Michel Gondry film. That would be ideal! I'd love to do an Almodovar film; you know, I think he's very, very talented. I don't care that people say he's pretentious. So what? He's a good director; he can be pretentious.

Elton John himself never seems pretentious but Bernie Taupin's lyrics often do - sometimes pretentious in a clever sort of way, but pretentious nonetheless. There is a conflict between Elton's and Bernie's personal styles, no doubt about it.

It's interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it's perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.

I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.

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