Comedians' first ten minutes usually stay with them the first several years of their career. It's their mission statement. Their disclaimer that lets people know who they are. Or were. It's also a good time to make fun of your name if you have a funny or strange one.
Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.
Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.
My parents had normal jobs, and I didn't just want to work all day, and so I thought if I could break into music I wouldn't have to work all day. And I had an uncle who was on Broadway, so I was like, 'I have to be able to sing.'
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.
The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
To all the girls out there who think being funny is not sexy, you are wrong!
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
There is an essential difference between someone who harms a child on purpose and someone who harms a child by accident during combat in civilian territory.
It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.
I had one nanny who made me sit in front of a bowl of porridge for three or four days running when I refused to eat it. I remember being very unhappy about that.
We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
Any musician who can stop may be a musician, but they're no artist. If it's in your blood, it can't stop flowing.
Be willing to shed parts of your previous life. For example, in our 20s, we wear a mask; we pretend we know more than we do. We must be willing, as we get older, to shed cocktail party phoniness and admit, 'I am who I am.'
I could not work with a girl who did not have a spiritual quality.
I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.
It's not ideal to always be one eye on the Blackberry and two arms around my children. For the sake of mothers out there who don't have the Blackberry but do have the children and are hoping someone will be raising their voice on their behalf, it's a great privilege.
I'm an artist, and the need to get inside myself and be creative and be other people is a part of who I am. I don't imagine I'll abandon that completely.
There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.
I have a great career, and I have wonderful fans who really are supportive and loyal - because I'm not hiding anything from them.
I think we have two very important missions in life. One is to find out who we really are and the other one is to taste as much of life and experience as much of life as we can.
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
I like there to be some testosterone in rock, and it's like I'm the one in the dress who has to provide it.
For the most part, these awards shows, while they are fun, they're high-pressure for the people who are nominated and for those walking the red carpet.
Such a structure would also raise a number of problems: first of all, which Timorese to pay compensation to? It would open a can of worms in terms of who was really a victim and who was not.
I'm like a decathlete who does all of the events he's used to, but is being forced by certain circumstances to focus on three events, and being forced to focus on events that he wasn't that interested in, and also weren't his strongest events.
People who express suicidal feelings are least likely to act on them.
Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.
We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.
I'm not a person you can figure out in one month. And you can't listen to one song and say, 'That's who he is.'
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore.
The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.
