For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.
Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.
I think that most people will spend their whole life not figuring out what they're meant to do, or figuring out what they're meant to do on their way to do something else. So I just feel lucky that I know what I love to do. Everything else figures itself out.
'Leverage' is meant to be based in Boston. But in one episode we're in New York, then another in Chicago, Florida, and Eastern Europe.
I didn't appreciate, coming out of corporate America... what it meant to a founder, the creator of the Macintosh, to be asked to step down from the very division that he created to lead the very product that he believed was going to change the world.
I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
Things tend to come when they are meant to come. I know that sounds kind of like spiritual and cheesy, but I think things come when they're meant to come.
I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.
I don't know if women are meant to run, especially after having kids.
I am really proud to be a part in whatever way of women becoming active in the political scene. I think it was the first time that people came to terms with the reality of what it meant to have a Senate made up of 98 men and two women.
Christmas music is usually more concentrated pop music in a way. It's meant to make us feel good, and it's meant to make us like we belong somewhere.
There's the right person, or right people, for each other. There is that order that's searching to be found but, I think, it's not as if everything is going to be automatic. So, people could really be meant for each other and its goes awry; or they could have to learn or develop and grow up together. Grow to be right together.
Tinguely wasn't the first artist to work with machines. But others were more interested in precision, in what machines are meant to do. What made him different was the random element. He introduced the mechanical accident. He was always interested in the immaterial, in sound, smoke, speed, light, shadows.
We went to L.A. as a family, with a sort of vision that we were going to 'make it,' whatever that meant.
In the subprime mortgage industry, bankers handed out iffy loans like candy at a parade because such loans meant revenue and, hence, bonuses for executives in the here-and-now.
I tried to go to the gym a while ago and hurt my foot. I thought, 'Well, exercise and I just aren't meant to be.'
Having spent all that time getting away from South Africa, running away from the army, I wanted very much to believe that America and England were actually as free as they were meant to be, not slipping rapidly into becoming police states like the one I'd just left.
Title IX came along and changed a lot of things for the better, but nevertheless, it meant that money became more important.
I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn't understand what the word 'assassinated' meant.
I met a guy on the golf course who was a kinesiologist - after I looked up the word, I found out it meant exercise. I started working with him, and that was many years ago.
25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.
Under slavery, families were ripped apart, and it was a desire of black men and black women to be together with their loved ones. Family meant something. Spouses meant something.
Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.
Some people are meant to be bigger, and that's okay. Because if everybody was built the same, it would be a little boring. We enjoy the differences in each other, and I think that's what makes all of us beautiful.
I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
The best advice I got really had nothing to do with singing; it came from my brother, who always told me to stick to my guns and to believe in myself. I think Duane saw my talents and believed in me long before I ever did, and that meant the world to me.
Shifting toward management meant greater responsibility and influence, but it also meant giving up programming day-to-day in my role, which was hard because it took me out of my comfort zone.
It's very hard to live in an environment where you're reminded, constantly told that your existence just happens to be here... That you are not meant to be here.
Poetry is meant to be heard.
It can be tough when you're on the road, but I think food is meant to be enjoyed, so whenever we go to a new place, we look for the specialty item there.
I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
Eighteenth-century doctors prescribed sugar pills for nearly everything: heart problems, headache, consumption, labor pains, insanity, old age, and blindness. Hence, the French expression 'like an apothecary without sugar' meant someone in an utterly hopeless situation.
I always figure hey, look, I'm not a rock star, I'm an actor. I'm somebody who's meant to be other people and I'm not meant to be here representing myself. I'm happier when I'm presenting myself as other characters.
Part of my act is meant to shake you up. It looks like I'm being funny, but I'm reminding you of other things. Life is tough, darling. Life is hard. And we better laugh at everything; otherwise, we're going down the tube.
People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant for them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing.
The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy,' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.
