Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started doing '30 Rock' and started writing 'Mystery Team' at the beginning of that. While I was doing 'Mystery Team,' I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got 'Community.' It's like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit.
Forty-two years ago, I came to America from communist Cuba so I might have a better way of life, a freer way of life - a more democratic way of life. I wanted to live the American Dream where if you worked hard and put your mind to the task, anything was possible.
Swipe fees have increased steadily since the introduction of debit cards 20 years ago, when there were no swipe fees at all. Merchants can't negotiate or control them. They've tried, but they have no leverage against the big banks and issuers. So they get ignored.
My tattoo is of a cannon in Vancouver that I got in a fleeting moment of stupidity maybe 14 years ago. A lot of people have really beautiful tattoos, and I get real tattoo envy. But then other people basically just treat them like bumper stickers for their bodies.
Years ago, Barry Diller asked me to be a judge on a pilot for an inventor show on USA, and when it was over, the producer, Ken Mok, took me out to dinner and really got me talking. It was a long dinner. Afterward, he said, 'One day, I'm going to write your movie'.
Ten years ago, you wrote a book and you never expected to find out anything about the author. Now with social media, everyone wants that connection. I think our readers want to be invited into our lives and brought on the journey and be part of this whole process.
For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.
Some of the top grossing movies now are children's animated features, they're making more money than action movies. And you'd never find a Hollywood A-lister years ago doing voice-overs for those films and they do now. You know why? Because everybody's got a price.
My body's feeling it a little bit. But one good thing, my back is in good shape, and that's my main concern. I know that my legs are going to take awhile to get back to where I was a few years ago, but as long as my back is solid, I feel that I can play many years.
In 1957, which is now 57 years ago, my grandfather and then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi welcomed Prime Minister Menzies as the first Australian Prime Minister to visit Japan after World War II and drove the conclusion of the Japan-Australia Agreement on Commerce.
Now the interesting thing about the movie is that many of the questions it raised about the Warren Commission and its investigation were all investigated by our committee 13 years ago. We published our findings in 27 volumes of information and evidentiary material.
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.
I'm a jewelry girl. I became with friends with designer Irene Neuwirth a few years ago. At that point, I just used to wear my wedding rings. Very low key. Now, if I could, I'd be draped from head to toe in her jewelry all the time. Everything she makes is beautiful.
Well, I just can't play the game anymore. I'm 63 years old, and I've been in the business for 40 years now. I take good advice and direction really well, but I don't need somebody that finished college two years ago to come in and tell me what I should be recording.
For my tribe, the people I found years ago, we've found sanctuary in the irreverent, in the off-center, in the quirky... And that's how we stay entertained, and that's how we stay engaged in what would otherwise seem to be a really cruel world. A really harsh world.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.
I remember years ago I was an extra, just an extra, and instead of asking me to move - he was a big fella - the director just picked me up and moved me. And I headbutted him. You know, he shouldn't have done that, but I shouldn't have done that either. I just done it.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called 'It Takes a Village.' And a lot of people looked at the title and asked, 'What the heck do you mean by that?' This is what I mean. None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone.
I've been offered, I think it was £300,000 to play live two concerts in London some years ago. And I said 'No. No thanks.' I would rather stay home here and change oil on my car, or collect some rotten wood from the forest, spread on my ruined former agricultural land.
There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.
I have created a capsule collection for Genetic inspired by memories of growing up in LA. Denim has always been my go-to, especially during my modelling days. I discovered Genetic Denim about five years ago - they are so comfy, you could almost be wearing your pyjamas.
Years ago, I did an interview about my mother for a publication called 'Info' magazine, and during that interview I told the reporter about my mother's leiomyosarcoma. She had had a hysterectomy, but at the time of it, the doctors didn't even think to look for sarcoma.
I sort of try to write everything for me. I'm a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don't remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio. I'm trying to make sure the jokes are self-contained so they're accessible to everyone.
We've taken on health care in a big way in our office, ever since nine years ago when I was paralyzed. I was in eight different hospitals, three different rehab centers, and all the rooms were dreadful. As an architect, designer, and patient, I can do something to help.
I've done that I was touring a couple of years ago with R. Kelly and the Lillith Fair, I would do the late night underground gigs as well because it's always around those times that there was a hot song, either on the radio or in the clubs, it would just be simultaneous.
One thing that took a while to really adjust to was, you do it for the the art, for the money, for being together and having a good time, but you do it for all those people out there who really care about the show. We are now talking about a show we did over 20 years ago.
I can't say I have had a ton of Hollywood exposure, as strange as that sounds. But by pure happenstance, I trailed Javier Bardem on a red carpet at a film festival in Palm Springs years ago. He's one of my idols, and I endeavor to walk an artistic path similar to his own.
There are many ways to manipulate chip cards. For example, a number of years ago when American Express issued the first chip card, criminals would take a small hammer with a little device and bang the chip to destroy it without hurting the physical appearance of the card.
The very best hotel I've stayed in is the Intercontinental on Park Lane. We went there for the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago, and it was sheer luxury. Everybody had a smile on their face. I came home and changed all my pillows because the hotel ones were so beautiful.
At the beginning, Lincoln was so inexperienced he had reverence for military expertise, not realizing that there wasn't any military expertise, that the most anybody had commanded up to that point had been somebody, some troops in the Mexican War, and it had been years ago.
I've been around golf my whole life. My father did it all the time, and I resented him for it. But a couple years ago I picked up a golf club and I understood the physics of it. If anyone knows anything about golf, it's that once you hit a few shots, you'll become addicted.
Consider: Life arose on Earth close to four billion years ago. Four billion years of slithering, swimming, and soaring life forms. But only in the last 200 thousand years has a species arisen that can fathom the laws of nature and build hardware able to signal its presence.
Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.
A lot of people look back ten years ago and go, 'Why was I wearing that?' I look back a year ago and say the same thing. The craziest outfit I ever wore was this white suit that I wore to an awards show in L.A. that I teamed with yellow shoes. It was interesting. It popped.
Seven and half years ago I began my own journey. For me and my family it was a time of adversity. But during that adversity I derived a deeper faith. And born out of that adversity was a commitment to devote myself to those people and to those issues that truly matter to me.
I actually ended up going through a vocal change. It started about two years ago, and it's only been recently that I found my balance again. Vocally, I couldn't figure out what was going on. My lows were getting lower, and my highs were getting higher; everything felt weird.
If there's a God, and we have all this evidence that there's evolution, but He created the world only 6,000 years ago - what is the best and most logical explanation to reconcile those two things? I came up with - He came up with it, of course - that all things are fakeable.
When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.
But inspiration? - That's when you come home from abroad and are asked: Well, have you found inspiration? - and fortunately you haven't. But the impressions sink in, of course, and may emerge later: None of us has invented the house; that was done many thousands of years ago.
Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.
Today we take New England clam chowder as something traditional that makes our roots as American cooking very solid, with a lot of foundation. But the first person who decided to mix potatoes and clams and bacon and cream, in his own way 100 to 200 years ago, was a modernist.
I was in 'Cliffhanger' years ago, so I'm a massive fan of the big event movies - the good ones - but there's a lot of crap that's made in between the good ones. It's just the superhuman films that I can't get my head around. I guess if you're a fan of them, then you love them.
These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.
President Obama's version of America is a divided one - pitting us against each other based on our income level, gender, and social status. His policies have failed! We are not better off than we were 4 years ago, and no rhetoric, bumper sticker, or campaign ad can change that.
I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.
Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats's world by Andrew Motion's biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats's letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me.
If you go back many years ago, you could cruise around and build up a big point lead. You cannot cruise around at all. You gotta be on it. And that's what I think people really enjoy. I've always believed that brings out the biggest moments, too. It brings out the driver talent.
My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.
About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!
Yucca Mountain isn't pretty. And it also isn't large. From far away, the mountain's just a squat bulge in the middle of the desert, essentially just debris from a bigger, stronger mountain that erupted millions of years ago and hurled its broken pieces into piles across the earth.