Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
It was only after a while, after photographing mines and clear-cutting of forests in Maine, that I realized I was looking at the components of photography itself. Photography uses paper made from trees, water, metals, and chemistry. In a way, I was looking at all these things that feed into photography.
What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.
I've had more acne as an adult than I had as a teenager. After weaning babies, my skin's gone totally bonkers. I didn't even know about dermatologists until I had weaned my first baby, and my skin was so damaged. It was just beyond. And then, I realized, there's a whole doctor who can help you with this.
When news of the first plane's hitting the World Trade Center reached them, bin Laden's followers exploded with joy. But shrewder members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan realized that the attacks might not be the stunning victory that bin Laden, and many in the West, took them to be.
I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.
My father was and is a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college, and the problem was I wasn't nearly as good as my father. I wasn't as quick or as smart as my old man, and I realized it would be a long time before I was ever going to be, and I decided to do something else.
The way I was raised, you get a new pair of sneakers when the old one gets messed up. But when I got to high school, I started dating girls and trying to fit in, and I realized everybody was collecting Jordans. When I would get my paychecks, I wouldn't even take money. I would just trade them for sneakers.
Years ago, I picked up figure skating. How hard could spins and jumps be, I thought? It's just applied Newtonian physics. After repeatedly falling on my rear end, I realized it was harder than I thought. But it had an upside. That is how I met my wife, who was ice dancing at the Rockefeller Center ice rink.
I think I was scared of the drag thing, as a lot of gay boys are. It's sort of knocked out of you in junior high. I wouldn't find guys who were very feminine attractive. Then, doing 'Hedwig,' I got to be man and woman, really butch and really femme at the same time, and I realized, this is kind of the ideal.
In relationships, I'm usually the one who's like, 'Oh, I don't need this right now. I don't need commitment. I can do well on my own. I'm independent,' and all this stuff, and I realized recently that that was making me really closed off to relationships and just closed off to anyone no matter who they were.
I played soccer for nine years, so I took that route instead of singing. I played on the outside team as well as in school, so I was always playing soccer. It wasn't until I moved back to London that I really, like, started investing in music again and realized, OK, yeah, this is definitely what I want to do.
As a child, my sister and I had very fruitful imaginations, and I would think that I wanted to be one profession or I'd want to have this experience in life. I realized it's not because I actually wanted to be a Coast Guard helicopter rescue pilot or something like that - I just enjoyed the idea of playing it.
I realized quickly what Mandela and Tambo meant to ordinary Africans. It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.
I suppose for me, with 'Djesse,' I realized fairly early in the process that I also needed a character to walk this path, which in some ways is me, and in some ways is not me. I think of Djesse a bit like the infinite child who can see everything and walk into everything as light as a feather and just alchemize.
I've realized through the years that I just find happiness in other things, whether it's my dogs or my friends or, like, looking at the sunset. So if I were to wish for something else, it would just to be happy all the time, to have a superpower of not letting things affect me, and to be true to who I am, always.
My sister was born a couple years after I was, and I realized that I wasn't getting enough attention, as much attention as I used to before she showed up, and then I learned pretty early on that if I could do a silly dance or make grown-ups laugh, then the attention would come back to me, and I would be accepted.
Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it's not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don't want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it's not unhealthy, so I'm going to rock with it.
Whenever they sang a certain song in church, I used to sing it the loudest: 'Lead me, guide me, along the way!' One day, as I was singing this song, I felt as if the Lord was saying to me, 'Lead you along what way?' I realized then that if you don't have a plan, God doesn't have anything specific to direct you in.
My father left our family for his 'yoga buddy' in 1984, when I was 15. I always stayed in touch with him - I had a deep need to be connected to my father, even though it could be painful at times. I shunned the yoga community because of his actions but eventually realized that yoga could be the antidote to my pain.
I always loved writing, be it creative writing for school or just poetry. I just loved writing, and in college, I started really trying to write songs and was copying other artists, just to figure it out - but I think freshman year of high school is when I realized, 'I want to be a writer. I have something to say.'
Soon after 'Paruthiveeran' I was flooded with scripts that were almost the same as the award-winning film. I had offers from Malyalam, Telugu and Kannada filmmakers. But I had to be firm and in fact I realized that now I had to be more careful with my choice of films because I have raised the audience expectations.
My hair grows into a fuzz ball - I just wanted it to grow downwards rather than outwards - but then I realized I couldn't play guitar with it that way. I couldn't do anything day-to-day without my hair getting in my mouth or my eyes or my food, so I just started tying it back, long before I knew what a man bun was.
I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.
The Illinois Constitution was written before they realized they'd have a city the size of Chicago in the state. The constitution had severe limits on the ability of any city to raise monies through taxes and bonds. When Chicago grew explosively, they had to come up with ways of getting more money to do more things.
Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one 'from love.' Love is to rule.
The perception in Silicon Valley is that if you dress well, you couldn't possibly be smart, or you're in P.R. but couldn't possibly run a company. I remember briefly attempting the Adidas and jeans and sweatshirt over T-shirt look, but I realized I was trying to dress like a young tech geek, and that just wasn't me.
When I was reading the Bible, I came across the word 'meek.' It means to be humble. I asked God, I want to become meek, allow me to become meek. About two months later I was struck with cancer. I realized this was God testing me. If you want to become appreciative, and humble, and meek, I'll strip you of everything.
Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.
I was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a major neighborhood specializing in that, in Brooklyn. And somewhere when I was about 14, something changed. And that change probably involved updating every molecule in my body, in that I sort of realized: this is nonsense, there's no God, there's no free will, there is no purpose.
The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.
I realized horses have personality when I bought one and I had one, who's now out to pasture, a horse named Drifter. Before that, I was a city boy. Horses, I used to go out to the LaBagh Woods and ride at a stable once every two years or something; no idea about horses. Dogs, I knew, had personalities, but not horses.
Personally, I've realized that the tradition I thought of as too safe, too pretty, and too conventional is the space where women have been able to gain some practical ground. The area of music where we thought the status quo was really being upset - specifically hard rock - has actually remained the most male-dominated.
In the past, I think I was scared of showing myself. I thought people disliked me because I received so much hate when I was young. But as I grew older, I realized that there were people who disliked me and people who liked me. So I learned that there was no need for me to be so conscious of what others thought about me.
Way back in the 1970s, I was eating a steak, and I looked down, and for the first time it suddenly looked like flesh to me - like a dead creature. In a flash, I realized that every time I ate any kind of meat, something had been killed for me, and I stopped eating all animals, not just cows and pigs but chickens and fish.
In Tanzania, the chimps are isolated in a very tiny patch of forest. I flew over it 13 years ago and realized that, basically, all the trees had gone, that people all around the park are struggling to survive. It became very clear that there was no way to protect the chimps while the people were in this dire circumstance.
Unlike uranium, plutonium was created in an American lab in 1940, but scientists soon realized that it could produce even wilder chain reactions and even bigger explosions. In fact, fearing another country would create it, too, the American government went to great lengths to keep even the existence of plutonium a secret.
I woke up on the plane this morning and was turning on my phone and I had to put my pin number in. That's when I realized that since the age of 10 I've been using 2012 as my pin number. But now that I've won gold in the 2012 Olympics, I've achieved that goal and, for the first time in 14 years, I'll have to change my pin.
In 2017, people have realized there isn't going to be one crypto to rule them all. You're seeing vertical solutions where XRP is focused on payment problems, Ethereum is focused on smart contracts, and increasingly, bitcoin is a store of value. Those aren't competitive. In fact, I want bitcoin and Ethereum to be successful.
I realized why I can cook for different environments. Because of everything I've gone through growing up. Why can I cook for a Hollywood event without blinking an eye? Because I cooked at the Beverly Hilton and because I moved to Villa Park. Why can I cook for kids on Hollywood Boulevard at night? Because I went through it.
What I learned in 'Sons' is that I would come in with a blueprint of a season and how it would go, and I realized that the looser my grip was, the better it became because the story found itself. Things happened as I wanted them to in terms of the bigger mile markers, but the fun part was I never knew how we would get there.
As a child growing up in San Francisco in the 1950s, I sometimes met insults when I ventured outside of Chinatown or my neighborhood. I have even been spat on and threatened with a knife. I could have let my anger fester until it became hate. However, I realized they were isolated incidents, and I simply got on with my life.
I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.
I was always telling myself I could handle a more complex role, I could handle something bigger and more interesting than the work I was doing. But I wasn't demanding that of myself. At a certain point, I realized it was never going to come my way unless I started taking more control of it. That's what I realized I had to do.
I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.
Last Friday night, I Twitted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle. Once I realized I posted to Twitter I panicked, I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued with that story, to stick to that story which was a hugely regrettable mistake.
I think I couldn't balance my marriage and my mother's deteriorating health. I realized it was unfair to my husband to have my divided attention. I understood he deserved better and should go for that. He deserved the attention of a partner, not another headache, and I didn't want to share my time with anyone else but my mother.
In December 1989, my mother died very suddenly, and that sparked a re-evaluation of what I was doing, and I realized I was mediocre at everything. I was a mediocre IBM employee, I was a mediocre entrepreneur, I was a mediocre artist. I decided that, although my mom wouldn't be around to see it, I wanted to be great at something.
What I've learned by going out and playing smaller venues and being more in touch with people is getting feedback, just by virtue of being able to watch the crowd react and watch their faces instead of being blinded by 3,000 spotlights. I've realized that you can quickly get out of touch with your audience if you're not careful.
One day, walking through the Bronx streets, I just realized that people were stopping me, taking pictures, and noticing me from across the street. I can't even use public transportation anymore, so I kind of stopped going places and started going straight to the studio, going home, and telling people I can't go anywhere anymore.