Trying Quotes - Page 682

I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.

My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover's mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it.

Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T true is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.

It is inspiring to see bands still trying to do significant and new things in the realm of sound. Most people in any category are more or less filling out the forms they've been handed. But there are always exceptional gems.

I could easily fill up each week with going to see debuts of friends' compositions alone. When you add in all of the bands I'm interested in catching and all of the improvisers that I still love, it gets almost impossibly daunting. I try to do as much as I can.

We [Notekillers] aren't necessarily trying to be role models, but if we are, that's cool.

The old model of the industry was founded largely upon business folk trying to make money off artists. At EMP, we let the music make the money, not the other way around. We have flipped the model to make the artistry be at the forefront of everything we do. Music makes the business and that's what makes it work.

As a critic, I try to stay neutral about movies before I see them, but I really wanted "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to be great. It's based on a barbed memoir by Kim Barker called "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan." And its stars Tina Fey, out of her comfort zone, just as Barker was a fish out of water when, in 2004, she began covering the Afghanistan occupation for the Chicago Tribune.

If you'd just try, I'm sure you'd be able to fly.

Don't wrench your shoulder out of its socket trying to pat yourself on the back," Beldin said sourly.

None of the individual metal hunks of an airplane have the property of flight, but when they are attached together in the right way, the result takes to the air. A thin metal bar won't do you much good if you're trying to control a jaguar, but several of them in parallel have the property of containment. The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts.

Nietzsche's 'perspectivalism' was expressly directed against the 'laughable juxtaposition of "man and world"'. But 'absolutist' accounts, too, typically try to demonstrate that human beings are integral components of the world these accounts articulate - that, for example, we are simply material bodies subject to the same natural processes as everything else.

I was in the middle of the golf tournament trying to make birdies and I was just having a blast. So that probably qualifies as having a greater appreciation.

I've just been working hard, trying to get some good stuff to come out.

You've got to make an effort on your own. Some people don't even try.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

I want to look at myself the way I do on purpose, because if you aggrandize and try to look at yourself the way a fan does or the way a reviewer does or the way - God bless them, they all got a right to, everybody's got a right to an opinion about it.

Later, when I was at Caesar's Palace, and [Joe and Gil Cates] were trying to get me to have opening acts for the show, they gave me a list of people, and Rosie O'Donnell was one of them. I said, "I don't really need any opening acts. I have funny stuff in the show, and I do a lot of comedy and stuff."

The more educated you get, the better shot you have to get it right, but if you're really trying something different, it's a challenge every time.

I'm trying to change theater, in my own way - not just magic. I say that humbly, because I'm learning every single day. I do 15 shows a week, and every single audience I have is like a test screening for you, when you listen and go, "Really? They laughed at that?" All over the stage I have lines, written onstage, that I'm changing every single day.

At nighttime, you just try to keep him out of jail.