Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Put it this way: If I asked, ‚How’s business?‘ and you say, ‚Boomin‘ or ‚Amazing,‘ I already know the answer.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

Nobody’s ever said that pins are a tool of diplomacy.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

When you find a guy who is powerful, a big father figure, you latch onto him immediately.

All men hate the nagging.

I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women’s issues to the center of our foreign policy.

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

It undoubtedly feels nice when you are being appreciated and you get complimented by girls. Who doesn’t like that? Having said that, I don’t take it as any pressure.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

Speak low, if you speak love.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

The way I talk is bizarre.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

You can only have one aim per debate.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.