Biography Quotes

I was born in the house my father built.

~ Richard M. Nixon

As the wildly favorable word of mouth spread, however, the box office receipts began to soar. First, fans of musicals came. Then the ever-growing cadre of Julie Andrews devotees. Finally, those longing for a happy ending—anywhere—began to turn out in droves. At which point the oddest thing of all happened: all these fans of the movie returned to see it again. And then once more. And then once again—until the phenomenon eventually resulted in a record-setting first release run of over four and a half years.

~ Tom Santopietro

She was an autocrat, didn't really believe in democracy. The benefit of her approach was that, if you work with twenty people and ask everybody's opinion, you would never achieve what she did.

~ Theresa Sjoquist

It's very hard to reach people in Greymouth with pottery or any form of art because they're allergic to it. Allergic to it ever since they began really because they've taken from the ground in the mining spirit without making or creating, and therefore anything that is creative they do not understand.

~ Theresa Sjoquist

Give me a fucking pre-med you fuckers, I'm a personal friend of Sir Lancelot Spratt.

~ Vivian Mackerrell

Start to focus on things that unite the races of people instead of things that divide us, and you will have already won the battle, and are a building block to the solution.

~ Ted Harts

If you put forth a small amount of effort, you just might find your next best friend for life is of a different race than your own.

~ Ted Harts

Honey, I work for money not love.

~ Denele Pitts Campbell

I only read books I know I will like

~ Vicky Unwin

Flint, Michigan. Detroit as seen backwards through a telescope. The callus on the palm of the state shaped like a welder's mitt. A town where 66.5 percent of the working citizenship are in some way, shape or form linked to the shit-encrusted underbelly of a French buggy racer named Chevrolet and a floppy-eared Scotchman named Buick. A town where 23.5 percent of the population pimp everything from Elvis on velvet to horse tranquilizers to Halo Burgers to NRA bumper stickers. A town where the remaining 10 percent sit back and watch it all go by—sellin’ their blood, rollin’ convenience stores, puffin’ no-brand cigarettes while cursin’ their wives and kids and neighbors and the flies sneakin’ through the screens and the piss-warm quarts of Red White & Blue and the Skylark parked out back with the busted tranny.

~ Ben Hamper

Courage, kindness and a great determination to succeed in life with a smile were hallmarks of my wonderful wife. And why her story deserves to be told.

~ Paul Roberts

Mechanically I carried on across the Irish Sea, noticing with a jaundiced eye that it had suddenly lost the sinister threat of no-man's-land and was transformed into a placid highway where ferry-steamers would soon chug peacefully over the unmarked graves of gallant seamen.

~ Jackie Moggridge

He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.

~ Charles R. Cross

Wherever he went he left footprints so firm that nobody could later efface or blur them, not even he himself, when on rare occasions he was tempted to do so.

~ Isaac Deutscher

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don't stay still, so life-writing can't be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going 'ahead of the rest of us, like the miner's canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions'. So, 'There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation'. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story. (Virginia Woolf, p. 11)

~ Hermione Lee

Maybe he'd never come across anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.

~ Aiden Shaw

The Ritz Hotel was grand, sophisticated, and established, unlike me. The only thing we had in common was façade. Mine may not have been as ornate but it was equally phony. I was presenting myself as an escort; I advertised as one, negotiated like one on the phone, and I identified as one to whoever was interested. I even simulated sex for escort rates.

~ Aiden Shaw

...no matter how frequently we came, when we arrived, they acted as if we had been away one hundred years. [His grandparents' greeting.]

~ James Vescovi

Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with.

~ Aiden Shaw

Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.

~ Aiden Shaw

She had privacy, and the privilege of walking up and down the same battlements as the sentries.

~ John Peter Nettl

Desolina and Tony had attended one-room schoolhouses until the third grade. ... According to Tony, there were hardly enough pencils and sober teachers to go around. [Author's grandparents educational background.]

~ James Vescovi

The art stream is filled with snags and has no volume so it has no support. If you finally choose art, no amount of reason or common sense can discourage you. You must selfishly carry on.

~ Theresa Sjoquist

When will the human race choose wisely? All know it is just as eventful, if not more so, when the young seek adventure, purpose, and dreams; instead of blaming everyone but themselves if they choose otherwise.

~ Theresa Sjoquist

Once undressed I felt less exposed. (...) Naked was my uniform. (...) There was no pressure to conform.

~ Aiden Shaw

None of my friends had grandparents like these. ... Tony and Desolina were exotic.

~ James Vescovi

Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation... If one is to record one's life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of the disorderly discontinuity which makes it so absurd, unpredictable, bearable.

~ Leonard Woolf

In 1946 there was no money in art, no dealer galleries, no craft shops. After the war we started to teach art in every school for the first time. Our generation played a crucial role. We were the stepping stones towards today's galleries.

~ Theresa Sjoquist

Perhaps once in a lifetime we meet someone who has the ability to inspire us in one brief meeting, who can confront not one but two life-threatening illnesses with remarkable courage – and instil hope in others in the face of the greatest adversity.Jennifer Roberts had all of those qualities – and so many more.

~ Paul Roberts

The difference between doing something and not doing something is doing something.

~ James Corden

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. -- Stella Adler

~ Sheana Ochoa

It doesn't help anyone to judge their happiness or career by looking at where others may or may not be. Dad said it best: 'All the time you're looking left and right at other people, you're neglecting what's in front of you.If you focus on looking straight ahead, you can take the odd glance at the future.' He's got a way of saying things sometimes that just puts everything into perspective.

~ James Corden

It's strange how things seem to come full circle. You know what I mean? I'm sure you do. The way your life seems to drift along with no set path, then something good happens to you and you can trace the line that brought you there back to a specific disappointment or rejection you suffered in the past. It's nice that things can level out that way.

~ James Corden

I often noticed that the surrounding mountains inspired Hitler. He once joked that here he stood 'above the world' in an environment comparable to Olympius, legendary mount of the gods, but that alone can never have been the motivation for himto put down his private roots on Obersalzberg.

~ Heinz Linge

The meat market itself was probably a greater influence on Spare than his first school. It offered a spectacle of thousands of animal carcasses, which arrived under the market by a specially built railway before being displayed and disposed of at ground level.

~ Phil Baker

Yet how could I not have believed Hitler a genius and unique when every day I saw and heard how the major personalities of the Reich fawned over him and worshipped him with total devotion.

~ Heinz Linge

When you see the Statue of Liberty, you will be in America.

~ Antonio Russo

I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist. ... I can digest philosophy better than food.

~ Alfred Nobel

Nicky Cruz: You come near me and I'll kill you!David Wilkerson: Yeah, you could do that. You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.

~ David Wilkerson

Whatever you believe, and however, each of us deals with these events in our lives, one thing is for certain the truism, time is a great healer, is of no consolation at that moment of intense, all-consuming grief.From GLASS HALF FULL

~ Sarah Jane Butfield