Defining Quotations

I've always known that performing is what I want to do. There was never a defining moment. I just came out that way.

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

I had one of those defining moments in the fourth grade when my teacher said the story I wrote was the best in the class, and therefore I would be going Young Authors Conference where I'd get to hang out with authors all day.

Sundance is going to be a defining moment in my life. But the unfortunate thing about Sundance is, when you have a film there, you can't have the opportunity to see other films.

There's no one defining moment that kills you or makes you.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

After defining an idea of what I want to achieve, through a series of storyboard images, I'll go to the ends of the earth to create it, whether that involves obscure camera lenses or the latest electronic techniques.

There's so many things that people do on a daily basis that they do as a way of defining who they are. But really, what defines who you are is when circumstances push you to the edge.

For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the primary way by which it knows itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.

Rock pools, so-named because they have been hammered out of rocks at the ocean's edge, are one of Sydney's defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known.

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.

Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.

We encounter and enter our richest, most humanly defining experiences by way of a tear in the fabric of things, because we are running late, or because we recognize, across a crowded room, a face whose lack of perfection allows a unique light to shine through and to stir us with uncommon wonder.

Defining the terms of the debate generally dictates who's gonna' win it.

The key to any good sports story is identifying the defining moment. In football games or a boxing match, it's usually pretty obvious. But in golf, sometimes it happens on Thursday. Usually it's Sunday, but guys who don't know the game, they can miss it.

I think that most of us can identify with the change that happens to Bruce Banner. We all have a little of both inside us. I think this is an important theme in defining the character.

I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.

I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do.

I believe that love between people is the greatest life-giving force in the world. It's intensely frustrating and inevitably makes a fool of you, but you can't stop going back to it, and it's pretty much the defining experience of a human being.

But tending machinery was one thing; defining what we were trying to do and why we were doing it, and developing ways to measure how well the job was done - this was something else again.

We need to end the government monopoly in education by transferring power from bureaucracies and unions to families. The era of defining public education as allegiance to centralized school districts must end.

It was the defining event and remains a thousand degrees hot.

Since I'm a story-oriented critic, sometimes it's difficult to discuss issues without defining them. At the same time, I try not to give away anything that hasn't been given away in first half, in TV commercials, or that isn't obvious from the set-up of the movie. My editors are aware of this tendency of mine and read carefully for spoilers.

The necessity to conceptualise has to come very early on, and defining a vector of development for that film also at the beginning of the process will allow you much more freedom as you go along.

I'm not a big fan of identity politics and sort of picking one thing and defining yourself with it.

A campaign is about defining who you are - your vision and your opponent's vision.

Those of us who believe in God and derive our sense of right and wrong and ethics from God's Word really have no difficulty whatsoever defining where our ethics come from. People who believe in survival of the fittest might have more difficulty deriving where their ethics come from. A lot of evolutionists are very ethical people.

You have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. If you don't succeed in this, then you will continue to pull that heavy wagon up the mountain, and despite the fact that you are pulling it, it will somehow run over your own foot.

'Santa Monica' was a big song, and I always knew it would be radio friendly. But it's not a defining song for me, though for a lot of people it is.

If bigots oppose gay marriage so vehemently, it must be because marriage is a defining institution for them; gays will never be fully accepted until they can marry and adopt, like anyone else.

You only need to look at Jane Austen to see how crossed wires can become a defining aspect of romantic life. Then again, if the course of true love ran more smoothly, it would have a terribly detrimental effect on our cache of love stories.

The most important part of fashion photography, for me, is not the models; it's not the clothes. It's that you are responsible for defining what a woman today is. That, I think, is my job.

I dont think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

I think every individual has his or her own power, and it's a matter of working, taking time and defining what that power is.

Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.

The word 'success' - who's defining it? It's about whether or not it makes me feel good. Four billion people don't have to see or hear it. If I've enjoyed the process of creation and I'm at peace, then what happens next is just entertainment. If mass appeal were actually something, Marilyn Monroe wouldn't be dead.

I don't want the iPod to be my defining thing.

If you're not out front defining your vision, your opponent will spend gobs of money to define it for you.

The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.

The word, and the concept of feminism, was a gift because it gave me a sense of identity and a way of defining how I wished to live my life.

My number-one goal is to never feel like I'm strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I'm doing that as anything - as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter - I feel like the minute I name it, I'm stuck in a box.

If we are paying attention to our lives, we'll recognise those defining moments. The challenge for so many of us is that we are so deep into daily distractions and 'being busy, busy' that we miss out on those moments and opportunities that - if jumped on - would get our careers and personal lives to a whole new level of wow.

I was a journalist when I made 'I'm British But...' I'd seen how important the media was in terms of defining Indians - after the riots in the '80s, I was like, 'Oh my God!'

I know as a consumer I want a story. I want a defining - I don't want just an album full of singles. I want to get to know the artist beyond what everyone else can hear on the radio.

I always thought that I would spend the first half of my life making money so I can spend the second half of my life giving it all away. And one of the defining moments of my life was when I realized that I could do both at the same time with TOMS.

I think TARP was the most defining vote since I've been in Congress. It was wrong. You don't nationalize private - it was wrong. It desensitized people to what $700 billion was, which opened the door for a $900 million stimulus, for Obamacare, for all these things. It was wrong. It broke my heart.

The first step is clearly defining what it is you're after, because without knowing that, you'll never get it.

I don't like defining myself. I just am.

Defining art is huge; I feel like it's such a subjective thing. It's more like what's not art. You know what I mean? I think there can be an art in the way people live their lives, and art can be a gift someone gives to somebody.

There must've been some part of me that wanted to make my mark. But there was never a defining moment.

Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

As a general rule of thumb, Democrats do better in national elections when the year's defining issue is economic fairness, and Republicans do better when the defining issue is national security.

George Bush didn't campaign on, 'If you elect me, I'm going to be a great president to confront terrorism and launch a war in the Middle East' because nobody was thinking about it in the year 2000. But it became the defining issue of his presidency.

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

A revolution simply means great change, significant change, and that's how I'm defining it - great change for the better, brought about through non-violent means.

My guys are defining themselves. They believe in themselves. It's a very close group.

One of the toughest things to do as a man in anything is to slow down when we're not doing what we think we should be doing. As men, we want to step on the gas. That's a defining point. It's a growth thing for me. It's the next step into a player becoming more entrenched at the Major League level, to have the ability to slow the game down.

One of the things we learned from the survey is automation professionals do not have a well-defined professional identity in the manufacturing world. There is not a well-defined book of knowledge for automation professionals. The CAP program is a way of defining what an automation professional does and to give them recognition for those skills.

One of Jones' defining characteristics was his knowledge of the political levers on campus and his ability to manipulate them to cause real actions to be taken.

More than anything it tells the UAW that their bargaining power is gone, ... The market is defining wages and benefits of the future and the best they can hope for is to work collaboratively with the companies to survive.

More than anything it tells the UAW that their bargaining power is gone. The market is defining wages and benefits of the future and the best they can hope for is to work collaboratively with the companies to survive.

Politics is all about defining yourself and the party you lead before others can define you.

Obviously, it was a defining moment for us as Canadians. I hear it every day, and it still is. It's never going to go away. We were voted the Team of the Century, and the goal was voted the sports moment of the century.

I don't know exactly when he got the memory flash, but he was in D.C. when it was the horrible defining moment, 'Oh my goodness, I think I've left my child back in my car.

I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.'

Many will see the vote on shore-based gaming as the first defining vote of where Mississippi is headed, ... Will it be business as usual; the same old, same old? Or are we going to lift our horizons and take advantage of this opportunity to have something better?

Choose to be pro-active, assertive and self-defining.

From a short-term point of view I don't expect any of these juniors to benefit. It's going to take six to 12 months to get legislation passed to get these guys up and running, and then they have to get government approval to actually mine the stuff. It could take many, many years for them to get their product to the market, let alone first defining what they've got.

I am excited and curious to see how we respond. In games 5, 6 and 7, you get a defining message on what you are going to be down the road, whether it's the next series or whatever.

For me, this is one of the defining images from that period of history.

From the Republican standpoint, we need the president to continue using the bully pulpit - in terms of defining the economy, defining the war, defining the war on terrorism. As opposed to that vacuum that was created last year where the Democrats defined the war and oil prices defined the economy.

For the short run, gasoline prices are going to be the dominant element in defining the economy.

Today is a defining victory but there are still many issues outstanding.

We can catch (Gwinnett). It's this road trip that's going to be the defining point. Either we'll catch up or they'll pull farther ahead of us.

He redefined comedy by defining the moment of our ascendancy as a generation. As did Charlie Chaplin , as did the Marx Brothers, as did Laurel and Hardy define their own times, Steve Martin defined ours.

We think that Minnesota is the kind of place that people will want to move to and work in. Defining marriage as between a man and a woman, we don't think, would necessarily have any real impact on the ability to attract people to a state that offers so much as Minnesota does." ()

We're in the middle of the integration test cycle. There haven't been any surprises installing the system. Just defining rules and policies, trying to determine how everything should work.

We're in the process of defining link protection. It allows for protected commercial content to move between devices across the DLNA network, and respects the rights of both copyright owners and content providers.

Historians will look back on this period of time following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as a defining moment for both our state and nation. To neglect the needs of this vital region sets an unimaginable precedent for America's response to future catastrophes in our nation. Our elected leaders need to see for themselves -- block by block, mile by mile -- the immense devastation, and the pressing challenges faced by so many people in this region.

Starting with that six-game road trip, that was our defining moment. Right now we're coming through with flying colors. We went 3-3 on that trip but it's how we've played. We played physical and together and we were in every ball game and we're carrying that throughout the end of the season.

Sports have become a defining attribute for men, unfortunately.

'Step Brothers' itself, when I did it, I don't know if I had any idea that it would become a defining moment in my career and life like it has, and I'm really happy that that's the one that ended up being that for me.

Our lives a series of defining moments,strung together by passing time.Surrender fully to this moment,because it is not the moment itself that defines us,but how we choose to live in it.

Our meeting has been useful, not in narrowing the differences but in defining them, ... I feel we have done everything we could reasonably be expected to do in agriculture.

I think a lot of people might consider humans to be at the pinnacle of evolutionary lineage -- that we have achieved an advanced state as a species, and we have basically become the end-game. But what we found indicates that the species -- particularly when it comes to the brain, which is perhaps our most defining feature -- is still evolving.

Jerry Robinson illustrated some of the defining images of pop culture's greatest icons. As an artist myself, it's impossible not to feel humbled by his body of work. Everyone who loves comics owes Jerry a debt of gratitude for the rich legacy that he leaves behind.

Johnny Unitas. Sure, Johnny had the physical ingredients required: lightning quick release, a laser for an arm, good ability to avoid the rush. But what set Unitas apart was the feeling you got in your heart when you saw him walk on the field, something that none of us are capable of defining or explaining, we just feel it. You knew he came to win. And, from the moment he walked into the locker room, you knew you had a better chance to win than the other guy. He was the toughest man I have ever known - physically and mentally.

I think the technology has allowed us to do a much better job of defining where the hazards are, where the strong shaking may be, where the bad ground is.

It is defining a new segment, and it'll do it big time, ... It's not a low volume segment. It could be as big as minivans. My belief is it'll reshape our whole idea of how we think about a small car.

It is defining a new segment, and it'll do it big time. It's not a low volume segment. It could be as big as minivans. My belief is it'll reshape our whole idea of how we think about a small car.

It does a good job of defining the difficult issues we face with China, but its standard solution is to beat Chinese over the head until they comply. That approach runs the risk of undoing our policy of engagement with China, which has been the policy of the last five administrations.

It is clearly emerging as a significant issue. It's still not at the scale of war in Iraq or overall economy. If it reaches the point where it starts defining the economy - then it's a real problem.

I think the colorful terms have made a difference in defining the sport as part of a revitalization of the Olympics.

I think the fluidity of gender is the next big wave in terms of adolescent development. Gender has become part of the defining way that youth organize themselves and rebel against adults.

It is a real defining line. It really defines what this battle is about.

I think the word 'soul' - it depends on what you define by 'soul.' If you're defining it as a mystical aura that is outside the body, I cannot measure that. If you're talking about soul as human nature, the rank of spectrum of behaviors and reactions that we know humans produce under certain circumstances, that is measurable.

Robin McKinley's 'The Blue Sword' was a defining book of my teen years, and I'd love to have more books like that in the world.