Callow Quotes & Sayings

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped. — Simon Callow

To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals. — Michael Bassey

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

It is only the young and callow and ignorant that admire rashness. Think before you speak. Know your subject. — Cass Gilbert

Fess up, 'Hunger Games' fans: Does anyone care about Peeta or find him attractive? He's the Ron Weasley of the series: he gets points for callow valor and sympathy for his run of bad luck, but he remains a pasty, earnest bore. — Richard Corliss

Oh, make no mistake. I am no callow, ardent youth. I am an elderly man, broken in health and body, and soon to die. I am a scientist and a philosopher. I, as all the generations of philosophers before me, know woman for what she is - her weaknesses and meannesses and immodesties and ignobilities, her earth-bound feet and her eyes that have never seen the stars. But - and the everlasting, irrefragable fact remains: Her feet are beautiful, her eyes are beautiful, her arms and breasts are paradise, her charm is potent beyond all charm that has ever dazzled man; and, as the pole willy nilly draws the needle, just so, willy nilly, does she draw man. — Jack London

I can't make flowery speeches," Sir Kai began, "and I wouldn't even if I could. I won't whimper at your feet like these callow puppies that call themselves knights these days, and I don't write poetry or play the damned rebec. I don't intend to change my manners or my way of life, but if you'll have me, Connoire, I'd be obliged if you'd marry me."
The incredulous silence that struck the watching crowd was so profound that Piers could hear the peep of a chickadee in the distant forest. Lady Connoire's expression did not change. Taking a deep breath, she said, "I don't like flowery speeches, and if you ever make one to me, I'll just laugh at you. I despise simpering poems, I hate the squealing of a rebec, and we'll see whether you'll change your manners or not. I'll marry you. — Gerald Morris

I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students. — David Ogilvy

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life. — Simon Callow

a few words spoken beneath the moon, love
may be, but I write your name
in the celestial dust that lingers
in the air, above
the veilchenblau roses, callow
and pale — John Daniel Thieme

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me. — Simon Callow

As a callow eighteen-year-old leaving for college, I'd seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldier locals, a pale to be from rather than a place to be. But years and miles away from home could never attenuate the city's hold on my identity and the more I explored places and people far from Hampton, the more my status as one of its daughters came to mean to me. — Margot Lee Shetterly

At thirteen desperately watching TV, curling my long legs under me, desperately reading books, callow adolescent that I was, trying (desperately!) to find someone in books, in movies, in life, in history, to tell me it was O.K. to be ambitious, O.K. to be loud, O.K. to be Humphrey Bogart (smart and rudeness), O.K. to be James Bond (arrogance), O.K. to be Superman (power), O.K. to be Douglas Fairbanks (swashbuckling), to tell me self-love was all right, to tell me I could love God and Art and Myself better than anything on earth and still have orgasms. — Joanna Russ

Like so many other kids gone wrong from my time, place, and class, I thought it glamorous to be self-destructive. Unfortunately, I had also always known that this was a stupid and callow way to think. — Emily Carter

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing. — Simon Callow

And the men come on again: the flashy and the penitent, the beaten ones and the wise guys, the hangdog heel thieves and the disdainful coneroos, walking, half crouched, through a downpour of light like men walking through rain. The frayed and the hesitant, the sleek and the bold, the odd fish and the callow youths, the good-humored bindle stiffs and the bitter veterans. — Nelson Algren

He spent hours and hours and hours practising these conjuring tricks. It's just such a curious thing. — Simon Callow

He very soon acquired the reputation of being the best public speaker of his time. He had taken pains to master the art, approaching it with scientific precision. On the morning of a day on which he was giving a speech, he once told Wilkie Collins, he would take a long walk during which he would establish the various headings to be dealt with. Then, in his mind's eye, he would arrange them as on a cart wheel, with himself as the hub and each heading a spoke. As he dealt with a subject, the relevant imaginary spoke would drop out. When there were no more spokes, the speech was at an end. Close observers of Dickens noticed that while he was speaking he would make a quick action of the finger at the end of each topic, as if he were knocking the spoke away. — Simon Callow

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape. — Simon Callow

I'd like to direct more operas. — Simon Callow

Very often my weekends are spent performing on Saturday, on stage in the afternoon and again in the evening. — Simon Callow

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own. — Simon Callow

Mostly, though, he made people laugh, with wicked impersonations of everyone around him: clients, lawyers, clerks, even the cleaning woman. When Pickwick Papers came out, his former colleagues realized that half of them had turned up in its pages. His eyes - eyes that everyone who ever met him, to the day he died, remarked on - beautiful, animated, warm, dreamy, flashing, sparkling - though no two people ever agreed on their colour - were they grey, green, blue, brown? - those eyes missed nothing, any more than did his ears. He could imitate anyone. Brimming over with an all but uncontainable energy, which the twenty-first century might suspiciously describe as manic, he discharged his superplus of vitality by incessantly walking the streets, learning London as he went, mastering it, memorizing the names of the roads, the local accents, noting the characteristic topographies of the many villages of which the city still consisted. — Simon Callow

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it. — Simon Callow

I don't have any big regrets. — Simon Callow

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown. — Simon Callow

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling. — Simon Callow

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor. — Simon Callow

They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. — Henry David Thoreau

He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer. — Simon Callow

Yes, I am finally a match for Amy. The other morning I woke up next to her, and I studied the back of her skull. I tried to read her thoughts. For once I didn't feel like I was staring into the sun. I'm rising to my wife's level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. It's a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.
We are one long frightening climax. — Gillian Flynn

Having caught a glimpse of what I might be able to do with my talent, I feel a tremendous obligation to try to fulfill it. — Simon Callow

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting. — Simon Callow

I will serenade you from the street, Maggie Windham. I will be so callow, you will marry me to save me from embarrassment. — Grace Burrowes

What's the use of healing, if the life that's saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There's a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding. — Louise Penny

tragic Powell, the Company Man Who Could Have Been Great, who was offered the mantle by all the polls but deferred to the Boss's Callow Son and vouched for him, — Garrison Keillor

Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.
And there are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because they live in an often-terrible world. They read because they believe despite the callow protestations of certain adults that books-especially the dark and dangerous ones-will save them. — Sherman Alexie

I am getting old, Russell. Gone are the days when I could scramble about on the moors all day and curl up happily at night with a thin blanket and a stone for a pillow. Three nights on floorboards and one night without sleep following three days at strenuous labour make me aware that I am no longer a callow youth. — Laurie R. King

Artists probably should have some impenetrable aspects of themselves. — Simon Callow

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged. — Simon Callow

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.' — Simon Callow

You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on. — Simon Callow

autopsy results?" "Natural causes," Cooper said. "Mrs. Owen was very ill and had a heart attack." Riley nodded. "Consistent with our findings." Lamond — Pamela Callow

I would say critically of myself that I am somebody without secrets. Sometimes acting depends on you having a secret. I don't think I've ever had that. — Simon Callow

Even the most artistic of imaginings can sometimes seem callow in the face of truth. That which appears may not be and that which lies hidden may just be the stark, naked face of reality. — Anurag Anand

I am not callow enough to suppose that books are not powerful
on the contrary, a book is the most delicious of paradoxes, an inert collection of symbols which are capable of changing the universe when once the cover is opened. — Lyndsay Faye

When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent. — Jack Vance

At times I feel that I am playing around the edges of things, getting nowhere. An extreme and callow youth playing with philosophy must be a pitiable things from your point of view. Today was a long day, the hours went by so slowly that I thought of many things and finally went into a mental sleep. I sat on a pipe and watched, and spoke in monosyllables to those who were about me, and I knew so many things which they did not know, there were so many worlds open to me whose existence was beyond their powers of comprehension, and I such a young lad. — John Steinbeck

The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition - that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable - is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute - the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures - is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature. — Theodore Dalrymple

The clear suggestion is that there ought not to be civilian control of the military. What have callow noncombatants giving brisk orders to grizzled soldiers? How could Lincoln have fired the slavery-loving Gen. George B. McClellan, or Truman dismissed the glorious Douglas MacArthur? — Christopher Hitchens

When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see clear break between one phase and another. It is a seamless flow - although flow is too strong a word. More a sort of busy stasis, a sort of running on the spot. Even that was too fast for me, however, I was always a little way behind, trotting in the rear of my own life. In Dublin I was still the boy growing up at Coolgrange, in America I was the callow young man of Dublin days, on the islands I became a kind of American. And nothing was enough. Everything was coming, was on the way, was about to be. Stuck in the past, I was always peering beyond the present towards a limitless future. Now, I suppose, the future may be said to have arrived. — John Banville

Somewhere in my callow, misspent youth, I was smart enough to marry my best friend. — Rob Lowe

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance. — Simon Callow

It's all about respect; he's looking for respect from his buddies. In the last one he just wanted to hang out, to be part of the group, but this time he wants more from his friends. And without giving the story away, he finally gets something that he has been looking for when the mini sloths kidnap him and take him to their tribal area. He gets to be the Fire King and they worship him and there is an amazing scene with a "call and response" sequence in the style of Cab Callow [the legendary American jazz singer and band leader] between him and his audience — John Leguizamo

Such eagerness to create space between present self and past sins obliges adults in the room to wonder whether callow youth has really wised up. "What — Kai Ashante Wilson

I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do. — Jo Brand

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state. — Simon Callow

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story? — Simon Callow

Finally, after a glance at Notre Dame and a brisk trot through the Louvre, we sat down at a cafe on the Place de l'Opera and watched the people. They were amazing
never had we seen such costumes, such make-up, such wigs; and, strangest of all, the wearers didn't seem in the least conscious of how funny they looked. Many of them even stared at us and smiled, as though we had been the oddities, and not they. Mr. Holmes no doubt found it amusing to see the pageant of prostitution, poverty and fashion reflected in our callow faces and wide-open eyes. — Christopher Isherwood

Was there ever any doubt?
And as the spotlights fade away,
And you're escorted through the foyer,
You will resume your callow ways,
But I was meant for the stage. — Colin Meloy

I'm lonely, whispered Doctor Callow.
Don't be. There's a million worlds to play with. — Catherynne M Valente

To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination. — Simon Callow

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation. — Simon Callow

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow-follow, oh-oh — Tom Jones

To callow wings no flight is too high to attempt. At sixteen all things are possible. — Annie Fellows Johnston

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices. — Simon Callow

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books. — Simon Callow

The unhorsing, wounding and capture of the enemy was sought, for corpses fetched little ransom, but in the blind chaos of the charge, death was a whore who did not care who she drew into her darkness, veteran knight or callow bachelor. — Robyn Young

No, you're wrong. I'm a hundred percent callow and deeply shallow. — Stephen Schwartz

Someone once said that middle age is like rereading a book that you haven't read since you were a callow youth. The first time around you were dazzled by impressions, emotions, and tended to miss the finer points. In middle age you have the equipment to see the subtleties you missed before and you savor it more slowly. — Eda LeShan

Bullock, Sam, died at the age of one-twelve. They'd been married five years. She was forty-six."
"Isn't that romantic?"
"Heart-tugging. First husband was younger, a callow seventy-three to her twenty-two."
"Wealthy?"
"Was - not Sam Bullock wealthy, but well-stocked. Got eaten by a shark."
"Step off."
"Seriously. Scuba diving out in the Great Barrier Reef. He was eighty-eight. And this shark cruises along and chomp, chomp."
She gave Eve a thoughtful look. "Ending as shark snacks is in my top-ten list of ways I don't want to go out. How about you?"
"It may rank as number one, now that I've considered it a possibility. Any hint of foul play?"
"They weren't able to interview the shark, but it was put down as death by misadventure. — J.D. Robb

I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. — Gillian Flynn

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor. — Simon Callow

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. — Camille Paglia

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy. — Simon Callow

We women are callow fledglings as compared with the wise old birds who manipulate the political machinery, and we still hesitate to believe that a woman can fill certain positions in public life as competently and adequately as a man. For instance, it is certain that women do not want a woman for President. Nor would they have the slightest confidence in her ability to fulfill the functions of that office. Every woman who fails in a public position confirms this, but every woman who succeeds creates confidence. — Eleanor Roosevelt

He always describes his characters' voices and their physique so brilliantly. As people have said, they are cartoons, caricatures. They're grotesques really. — Simon Callow

There is something essentially sanguine about me, which I am inclined to attribute to the fact that I was born by caesarean section. It must affect you. — Simon Callow

How strange it is to realize now that although I was frightened of the emptiness between us, that emptiness was not his fault but mine: I was waiting to see what he would give me, how he would entertain me. And yet I was incapable of being profoundly interested in him or, maybe, in anyone. Just the reverse of what I thought at the time, when it seemed so simple: he was too callow, or too cautious, or just too young, not complex enough yet, and so he did not entertain me, and it was his fault. — Lydia Davis

There were about 30 children at one stage, running around like savages at a place called Callow Hill, near Monmouth, which was owned by my grandparents. They lived in the big house, but my dad had five brothers and a sister, and they all lived in various houses scattered on the hill. — Saul David

With the publishing of The Basic Eight, it was often assumed that I was really immature and callow, and with the publishing of Watch Your Mouth, it was assumed that I was oversexualized, and with Lemony Snicket, it's often assumed that I'm erudite and depressed. But all the voices more or less came naturally to me. — Daniel Handler

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it. — Simon Callow