Ask Quotations | Page 4

You go to the cosmologists and ask how they tell the history of the universe; you go to the geologists, how do they tell the story of the earth, and the biologists, and then you string them together. And it turns out that when you string them together, if you do it carefully, there's a story that is coherent, engaging, fantastically interesting.

I had a reporter ask me what it was like to have my best years over so soon. It stayed with me.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

If you ask me, 'Are you for or against gay parents?' for example, having kids - it's hard for me to say, 'Yes.'

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

People ask if my parents are hippies, but they're actually very conservative. A girl called Rebel sang at their wedding, and that's where my name came from.

Before I was a year old I walked and talked and I was even potty trained. When I started going to school I think I got on everyone's nerves because I used to ask adult questions rather than settle for the stuff usually fed to kids.

Never guess a woman's age. Never guess a woman's weight. Never even talk about weight in front of a woman. And never, ever ask a woman when she's due.

When people ask me what it is about Brazil and my work, it's not something that I can say literally. It's unidentifiable. It's like when you do research and things inspire you. If you're smart enough, then obviously you don't take it literally. The inspiration will come out later somehow.

When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time.

I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.

I don't like to be noticed. The older I've got, the more reclusive I've become. I've got late-onset shyness. People are lovely. When they see me in the street, they don't ask for anything from me. They just say: 'I thought it was you, and I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your books,' but I can't seem to cope with it anymore.

I often ask myself, 'Why is it that most of the lies come out of Islamic countries, and why is it that most of the social corruptions are in the Middle East and in these Islamic countries?' The answer is, when you control something, when you suppress something, people try to do it another way.

As a car lover, I ask myself, 'What am I going to be buying in the future? Will it be a boring, underpowered, dorky car because the government tells me I shouldn't pollute? Or do I come up with a cool-looking, sexy dream car that is also part of the future?'

This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.

I'm aware of the fact that I don't know how to do it all, but I want for my blog to be a place where people can come to ask questions so that I can look for the answers for them. That's the kind of work that I did for my books, and I want to transition that to my blog for more of a community feel.

My aunt is the director of the acapella group Black Voices. I was so struck by them as a child. They sang with such passion and conviction. By the time I turned 15, I had plucked up the courage to ask if I could join the group. Acapella is a different discipline from singing with an accompaniment - it is much more exposed.

You ask why I'm fascinated by the human figure? As a human animal, I am interested in some of my fellow animals: in their minds and bodies.

When someone came to ask us for help, it was sacred. We did not even think twice. We helped them, even if we had only meagre means; we offered them arms, a little bit of money, and in occasion, men.

'Newhart' ran the longest, and it was great to have a regular role, but I run into a lot of film fans, and they ask me about 'Blade Runner.' I was grateful to be a part of that.

Part of me wanted to disappear into a cave in India, and I did end up going on retreats there, but, don't ask me why, I always felt very strongly that the point for me was to find a way to live a truly spiritual life in the modern day world and be able to work with all the positive aspects of our cultural and technological advancements.

People ask me, 'Why are you still writing books?' Like I'm still only writing to make money and as soon as I have enough I'll quit and go fishing? I like to write books. It's the most satisfying thing I do.

One of my favorite things is when people will ask for a song that I hadn't planned to play. It is really fun to see if you can remember something, and you don't always. I mean, sometimes it's just crash and burn.

Whenever I talk to people who founded a company, I often like to ask the prehistory questions 'When did you meet? How long have you been working before you started the company?' A bad answer is, 'We met at a networking event a week ago, and we started a company because we both want to be entrepreneurs.'

People used to ask me questions on my blog about how to break into the acting industry. You often have to start out in parts where you have very few words, but you still have to try to make an impact.

Kids have no sense of appropriateness. They can ask me whatever they want. You do develop a sense of intimacy with readers, and they tell you things about themselves. During a school year, I'll get e-mails asking about the books. I'll give them information, but I won't do their homework for them.

I believe a nation does not maximize its health care until it starts to ask the hard question: How can we prioritize our expenditures to buy the most health care for the most people? We should not apologize for rationing; we should promote it and advance it.

I was a bar-back, which is the person who cleans the bathrooms at the end of the night in the bar, and a cook. I had kind of given up. I was into backing other people up. Music was something I just did on the side and I don't think I had the energy to pimp myself out, like call people up and ask them to book me to play.

An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?

Now, when we say we want peace, what we want is really for our Palestinian neighbours to have a demilitarized state next to us that recognizes the Jewish State. We're willing to recognize their state, the Palestinian state. But we ask them to recognize the Jewish state.

People ask me, what was your rock bottom? I say, pick.

I do go against my leadership all the time because I stand firm on the four questions that I ask about all legislation. The first, is it constitutional according to the original intent? The second, does it fit the Judeo-Christian Biblical principles that our nation is founded upon? Third, do we need it? Fourth, can we afford it?

If you ask people if they enjoy crime novels, they'll say, 'Oh, my guilty pleasure is...' then name a really brilliant crime writer.

Fifteen years ago, France was the promised land of cooking. So I looked at a map, found five restaurants and faxed them to ask for a job. Within five minutes, I got a reply from the then three- star Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.

I've done a lot of interviews of the last few years, and I've actually started a list of questions that it would be fun to ask an author, but no respectable interviewer would ever ask. Since I'm not respectable, I'm going to start doing interviews with some authors I know, just for fun.

To be honest, I joined Facebook as an experiment. I accepted all invitations just to see how many people would ask to be 'friends' - it quickly overwhelmed my time to process even the invitations and requests, let alone to actually go there and do anything.

I was the first judge in the 'Indian Idol' format. The biggest risk when you adapt a format from a country in the West is how to make it your own, so I remember at the press conference for Indian 'X Factor,' the press would ask, 'Who is Simon Cowell?' And I said 'Why don't you ask Simon Cowell, 'Who is Sonu Nigam?'

I used to get tired of drinking iced tea, so I'd ask my wife if we had some lemonade, and I would just dump it right in there.

One of the last books I read was 'Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. It gives a really good behind-the-scenes look at the campaigns. I didn't ask the president how accurate it was. I wouldn't ask him that.

When I ask the young people from California why they want to go to New York, and the ones from the East why they're determined to go West, I hear what you'd expect: new challenges, different weather, boyfriends, girlfriends, to make a name... They laugh when I say, 'But your poor mother.'

What I would ask the Democrat Party is to put your plan on the table, because most people agree with the facts, and the facts are that Social Security is running out of money.

It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, 'Is your company for sale?' and if they said 'No, we have no interest in selling,' that was sort of the end of the conversation.

I never want to have to ask my husband for money. Never! That's incomprehensible to me. Would he have preferred that I change my name? Probably. But that's OK!

I know that when Terry and I were together, 10 years ago, he did not appreciate it when people would ask him what it is like being partnered with a celebrity. Precisely because it suggested that he had no value.

People often ask how I can reject the phrase 'woman writer' and not reject the phrase 'Jewish writer' - a preposterous question. 'Jewish' is a category of civilization, culture, and intellect, and 'woman' is a category of anatomy and physiology.

Online transactions, once relegated to leaps of faith, have evolved into our status quo. We no longer ask ourselves whether or not it's wise to buy online. Instead, we ask whether or not it's wise to deal with a particular person, service provider, or business.

Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.

Muhammad Ali was a god, an idol and an icon. He was boxing. Any kid that had the opportunity to talk to Ali, to get advice from Muhammad Ali, was privileged. He's always given me time to ask questions, although I was so in awe that I didn't ask questions.

I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence.

I've always been curious. I keep a list of people I'd love to have lunch with, like the Pope or Leonard Cohen. I'll read an article about someone I've never met and think, 'I should ask him to lunch!'

It's like I say to young people who ask me about going into journalism: If you want to be loved, don't go into this business.

Due to the failure of politics, which has become a process of middle-management, art has become one of the last open spaces to question core beliefs and to design a viable future. Art becomes an open space where we can ask fundamental questions about ourselves.

When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don't discuss that.

The first thing the Chinese ask you when they meet you is: 'How much money do you make?' It's a legitimate question to ask in China.

At readings, audience members sometimes ask if I keep writing past the two hours if I'm on a roll, but I don't. I figure that if I'm on a roll, it's partially because I know I'm about to stop.

People used to ask me how I got my jollies, and I guess I'm happy when what I'm doing is helping people and unhappy when what I'm doing isn't helping people.

For you to ask advice on the rules of love is no better than to ask advice on the rules of madness.

I seem to spend a minimum of eight hours a day in transit of some sort or another... that's eight hours of your life gone. People always ask if I suffer from jet lag, but it's kinda become really normal for me... Although the jet lag does become a factor and you're pretty much always tired.

When people ask me why I'm amazed at what Barack Obama has accomplished, I tell them it's not because of what most of America and the world sees and knows of his history. It's because I witnessed what I can only describe as a bizarre turn of events that thrust him into position to even become a U.S. senator.

I photograph artists, and some of them are very well known, but if you ask the average man on the street, 'Do you like Anselm Kiefer?' He would stare at you with a blank stare, because these are not celebrities. They are celebrated in a specific circle.

The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don't want to live according to scripture - we don't have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don't have the church tradition that the Christians have.

When people ask me if I'm liberal or conservative, I say, 'Yeah.' I'm both of them. To be a liberal means to be open-minded and generous and open to new ideas. And to be conservative means to hold onto things that are important, things that shouldn't be cast aside.

What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.

I learned something from that. If someone asks me something that I really don't want to do, I say no. I have to trust that. And I'm not afraid to talk money.

Well, the crazy thing for me is I think out of anything that's happened in the last year, all the success, people always ask what do you guys do with the money? I don't think they realize we're not really making any money.

Basically, my mother couldn't hold a tune and when I was a baby, a rather tactless baby, I would ask her not to sing... you can't get to sleep if someone is singing off key nearby.

If you were to ask me what I couldn't do without, it would be sashimi.

If you ask me about vocal technique, I don't know anything. I could never be a teacher. I just know what my teacher told me: 'Always sing with a full voice. When they tell you, less sound, more piano - no.'

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask 'Why?' ceaselessly.

Part of my evolution has been to learn how painful most people's childhoods are. They grow up not liking themselves, not loving themselves. Ask people if they were lovable the minute they were born, and watch them sit back and have to think about it. One lady said, 'I suppose so.' That's painful.

I was a Great Society liberal on domestic issues. People ask me, 'How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News?' The answer is, 'I was young once.' End of answer.

I've been talking to certain wrestlers on the phone lately, and certain female wrestlers that were huge stars ten years ago, and the first thing I ask them is 'do you still want to work?' Do they want to talk, or do they want to wrestle or do something else in the business?

I like it when an actor is secure enough to ask questions, and the director is secure enough not to be threatened by that.

Ask any venture capitalist, and they will tell you that they consider the experience and completeness of the founding team to be a more important factor in their investment decision than the technology that is being built.

When I hear so-called professional journalists ask why we have celebrities speak for us and for the animals, the environment or social causes, I marvel at their denial of the rules of their own trade.

We have to ask ourselves, 'What kind of world is it where a baby-food executive substitutes artificial flavoring and sugar for apple juice? What kind of businesses have we created when we even lie to infants?'

I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?

When somebody asks me a question, I try to be as straightforward about it as possible. I try not to overthink what I'm going to say in an interview.

I don't look at 'Vogue' to ask what I'm going to wear. Because it's something on a body too young. I have to look at the social pages to see women my age. To see how Amanda Burden is dressed and say, 'Hmmm. Maybe I should try that.'

If you ask any person on this crew what they think of Hugh Jackman they'll admit they've never seen anything like it. I'll give him an emotional note and he'll hit it every time.

Please don't ask me any questions about the politics of 30 years ago.

If you are an investor, I hope that you will stay with me for three, four, ten years. But if you ask me to make profits in ways that I have to change my allure, I won't do that. I won't lose my identity.

If you were to ask me about a mistake I have made, it's calling my fourth album, 'New Jersey', because for the first time in my life, we were compared to the E Street Band.

My family, you know, are all still, you know, very close. We're all still very close. Mom and Daddy are still alive. So, what more can you ask for? Your kids are healthy.

I'll give my heart and soul whenever I step on that field and even when I'm on the sidelines. And at the end of the day, that's really all you can ask of someone.

Every now and then I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me, and I experience racism. Things like not being buzzed into a store or sitting in first class on a plane and having someone ask to see my ticket four times.

I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions.

If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions.

Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people 'disappear' or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.

Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I have concluded that the questions always look alike. I could always give the same answers.

I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.'

There is always a place I can take someone's curiosity and land where they end up enlightened when we're done. That's my challenge as an educator. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

People ask what I really did in the three years between 'The Dreaming' and 'Hounds of Love.' I spent it with my family, living a normal home life.

I follow a simple formula when I compose. I ask myself, 'What would the audience want to hear?' and 'Why would they buy my CDs?' And the process of answering these questions through music follows. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it backfires.

In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating, but for everything.

Let me ask you a question: If you never ate a balanced diet, what would happen to your body? You know the answer: Eventually you'd grow weak; you might even open yourself to serious illness or disease. We all need a balanced diet if we are to stay healthy.

If you ask me, over time, I am a believer in the Indian financial saving story getting stronger; a lot more savers are moving money away from gold and real estate into banks, mutual funds, insurance and equities.

You can find a mentor; you have to ask questions, you have to show interest in what the other person is doing. You have to have curiosity - I think that people appreciate that and will want to help you.

People ask me all the time would I like to still be playing? No. I'm glad I played when I played.