Darin Quotes & Sayings

Show me any top entertainer or top business executive, and I'll show you a guy who has mapped out his life from the very start. — Bobby Darin

All of our early hits, 'Danke Schoen' and 'Red Roses,' were produced by Bobby Darin. — Wayne Newton

Where there is life, Nan used to say, there is hope. — Sabaa Tahir

Too much contemporary fiction seems purposefully to address small things in small ways. And yet why not try for the all-inclusive, the gripping, for the audacious? — Darin Strauss

I am now a turtle. Virtually everything I own is on my back and suffice it to say I am one ton lighter and therefore 2,000 pounds happier. All houses are gone. — Bobby Darin

I suppose that, for most of us, the fascination of conjoined twins is that such people can serve as symbols. — Darin Strauss

Surprisingly, Manhattan casts a sort of undersized shadow onto Long Island. Where I grew up, everyone seemed totally disconnected from the city - ours could have been any suburb, anywhere - though when traffic was thin, it took us only half an hour to get into midtown. — Darin Strauss

And he sought, with quick vanity, the reflection in a big mirror opposite him. Just as fast he turned away. He appeared to have reached that situation of health where vanity meant you didn't risk your face in the mirror. — Darin Strauss

My training and my inclination is to invent. — Darin Strauss

Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus's face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I double over, retching, and his knee comer up into my forehead. The hallway spins, and I drop to my knees. Then I hear him laughting, a sadistic chuckle that stokes my defiance.

Sluggishly, I throw myself at his legs. It won't be like before, like during the raid when I let that Mask drag me about my own house like some dead thing.

This time, I'll fight. Tooth and nail, I'll fight. — Sabaa Tahir

It happens to the best of them. You lay off singing and your throat gets out of practice. No excuses. I blew it. — Bobby Darin

I want to make it faster than anyone has ever made it before. I'd like to be a legend by the time I'm 25. — Bobby Darin

For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc. — Darin Strauss

There is nothing wrong with being afraid - but there is nothing more wrong than allowing that to be your master. — Bobby Darin

The cracks in old friendships are measured in awkward pauses. — Darin Strauss

There are certain times I don't want my picture taken. If my wife's stepping out of a car and it looks like it's going to come out an indecent picture, don't I have a right to object? — Bobby Darin

Like all writing rules, the injunction to start with the trouble can be broken, and it should be sometimes - if there's good reason. — Darin Strauss

The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the waters beneath you, as you float toward that lady at Delphi, who, you imagined, reading Mythology, must have been beautiful. It doesn't matter that Charybdis, with no body, with no form, with only a mouth-as-being, couldn't have been evil, because she lacked the brain for it. It doesn't matter that following the logical course of events, the natural course, always disadvantages someone else, because love, after all, is simply a competition for resources, made infinitely complex and unknowable when squared and cubed and raised to every other emotional exponent - and then layered with sex and society and a bad memory for what those resources were in the first place. — Darin Bradley

We contain more than our understanding allows us, at a given moment, to understand. — Darin Strauss

Little Sandra Dee isn't supposed to smoke, you know. Or drink. Or breathe." - Sandra Dee, the actress — Dodd Darin

I realized that I needed to be anonymous on the street and somebody else on the stage. I had tried to put my street self on the stage, but what they want is an actor on stage. — Bobby Darin

If the things we eat have been processed - manipulated, broken apart, adulterated, with most of the fiber (and nutrients) thrown away - then we end up consuming something that's food, technically speaking, but lacks many of the health benefits that eating is supposed to bring us. We get calories - which we need to survive, of course - but little else. None of the nutrition. As Dr. Fuhrman puts it, we end up mechanically full but nutritionally starved. If we do that often enough, we will absolutely harm ourselves at the cellular level. Over time, that may bring about some chronic condition. — Darin Olien

My wife and I live in Brooklyn, N.Y., not too far from where my Long Island childhood happened. — Darin Strauss

Judgment helps one to make the appropriate decision at the appropriate moment and diminish the influence of fate. — Darin Strauss

The detective had a kidnapping, he had a knife and he had blood. He had an insane old man. He was going in. — Darin Gibby

Not to be too 'Tale of Two Cities' about it, but I find writing a memoir easier than writing fiction, and more difficult. — Darin Strauss

The novelist has permission to do whatever she chooses to supercharge whatever's interesting in her story. This is also known as freedom. — Darin Strauss

Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music. — Johnny Rivers

When you know you are dying, self-deceptions fly from your bedside like embers off a bonfire. — Darin Strauss

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter. — Darin Strauss

I'm really wary of self-help books. — Darin Strauss

To the pure blood of the grape! — Darin Gibby

His nervous eyes watched me above his words, apologizing for the ways the excuses weren't right even as he couldn't stop presenting them. — Darin Strauss

When he hit it, I knew that it was my ball. But I had to catch it and it seemed like the hardest catch of my life. I said to myself, 'Two hands, just like your dad taught you.' — Darin Erstad

I've got a dream lover, so I don't have to dream alone. — Bobby Darin

The muffling blanket would fall over my thoughts. — Darin Strauss

You get a bad review with a novel, and it hurts. But I imagine if you get a bad review with a memoir, it hurts more because you can always say, 'Well, they didn't like my characters,' but when you're the character, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, they actually didn't like me.' — Darin Strauss

A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots. — Darin Strauss

The thing about oracles is that they talk back. — Darin Bradley

Sure my career means a hell of a lot, but it will never come before Sandy and my son. — Bobby Darin

I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives. — Darin Strauss

George Burns was the father I never had. — Bobby Darin

I don't care if I never do another TV show in my life. — Bobby Darin

Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job? — Darin Strauss

Passion and platonic friendliness, often contrary siblings, frequently wear similar faces to hide the great distance between them. — Darin Strauss

I have twin six-year-old boys. Have no mojo. The closest thing to a mojo I have is five minutes of peace. — Darin Strauss

Perhaps it's because a writer lives in Brooklyn that he'd want to get away from it. It can be very sustaining, this community of writers - sometimes it's the feeling of many hands giving you a boost. But all that identical ambition can be choking, too. The many hands slide up to your throat. — Darin Strauss

Everybody wants life to speak to them with special kindness. Every personal story begs to be steered toward reverie, toward some relief from unpleasant truths: That you are a self, that beyond anything else you want the best for that self. That, if it is to be you or someone else, you need it to be you, no matter what. — Darin Strauss

It would be a dream to do a film with Pedro Almodovar and that whole crew of Spaniards. There's this Argentinian actor who's one of my favorite actors in the whole wide world. His name is Ricardo Darin, and he's a brilliant actor. He does a lot of Argentinian films, and I know he does a lot of European films, as a Spanish actor. — Julie Gonzalo

If you're guilty of something, you can focus on that, but if something terrible happens, and you can't imagine how you could have changed it, that's very difficult for the mind. In some ways, it's more difficult not to be at fault because it's a subtler thing. — Darin Strauss

I've come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn't properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That's what shock is. — Darin Strauss

A group or an artist shouldn't get his money until his boss gets his. — Bobby Darin

The 1850s proved to be the decade of the most prolific patent litigation in America's history. Lincoln himself was involved, as well as his most three prolific cabinet members: Chase, Seward and Stanton. — Darin Gibby

Often it's the people who know a place least well who write about it best because they see it fresh. — Darin Strauss

I feel kind of sorry for those kids who just play one sport growing up. — Darin Erstad

The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure. — Darin Strauss

Memoirs are - memory is - rarely 100 percent accurate. Any autobiography is a construct, ballpark, even unnatural. Private diaries, too, can be unreliable - a detail that matters only if the diary is read. — Darin Strauss

I got a job writing for a financial technology newsletter in Manhattan. I didn't even understand what I was writing about. The newsletter had, like, 2,000 subscribers, and it was $700 a year for a subscription. — Darin Strauss

I delivered Chinese food on Long island, which is pretty depressing. I lived with my parents and did that for six months. I got a job a few towns over from mine so I wouldn't have to see people from my high school. — Darin Strauss

Any fool knows that bravado is always a cover-up for insecurity. That's the truth. And on that note, I'll say goodnight. God love you. — Bobby Darin

But one man never laughed. He was a giant among men. He was Bobby Darin and he was my friend. — Wayne Newton

It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives. — Darin Strauss

The part of the brain that isn't automatic is an imagining machine, feeling all possibilities of feelings: it keeps pushing its way into this marshy, pleasant terrain. You struggle against that push, and start to feel your stomach protest. It's not so much even a type of seriousness as it is a circumstance, into which you pass by slow degrees. I've never seen this sufficiently examined. It mutates into a less-unreal reality that still seems different, somehow, than being fully present. Self hate is rarely unconditional. — Darin Strauss

People say I was made for this
Nothin' else would I trade for this
And just think I get paid for this... — Bobby Darin

Just call me a family man and an actor who digs his whole scene, side interests and all. Just say I feel mighty good at the ripe old age of 27. — Bobby Darin

It's good training for a novelist to try to discern the truth about a place after only a few glimpses of it. — Darin Strauss

I think it's a wonderful fact about Judaism - at least about the approach to Judaism I most relate to: There are no universal answers. We don't have it all figured out. God is unknowable. — Darin Strauss

We were most amused by destroying what we'd taken. — Darin Bradley

I dazzle you with that footwork. — Bobby Darin

Society isn't good at dealing with people who have something concrete to feel guilty about or who are dealing with a loss. — Darin Strauss

Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you. — Haruki Murakami

A tragedy's first act is crowded with supporting players, policeman scribbling in pads and making radio calls, witnesses crimping their faces, EMS guys folding equipment. — Darin Strauss

Things don't go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future.
But we keep making our way, as we have to. We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that's the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. — Darin Strauss

Now, whether my not asking for good things to happen to me is subconsciously intended to win me brownie points with God is something I can't answer. But I do feel the need to give thanks and also not to feel hypocritical by asking for things when I have doubts that God would answer me. — Darin Strauss

My entire life has been a lie. — Bobby Darin

I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy. — Darin Strauss

I have come to love you in spite of
Do I want to be loved in spite of? ... Does anyone? — Darin Strauss

Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law. — Darin Strauss

My family comes first. Maybe that's what makes me different from other guys. — Bobby Darin

When I come out and sing the first few bars of Bill Bailey, it's very exciting. — Bobby Darin

At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly. — Darin Strauss

I had been on tour with people like Roy Orbison. I knew Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke. So many great performers. — Bobby Vinton

Conceit is thinking you're great; egotism is knowing it. — Bobby Darin

The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs. — Darin Strauss

In fiction classes ... you find that epiphany has a pretty high rate of occurrence ... But when you tell your own story honestly, that epiphany thing is rare ... The only changes are emergencies or blessings: when you wake up, notice the surroundings, then fall back, and wander more. And if you're lucky you end up walking again through a life where you're never called on to do much noticing. — Darin Strauss

I started with Bobby Darin. He signed me to Capitol when I was 15. I was 14, getting ready to be 15. Then the next encounter I had was with I think Peggy Lee. I sang background with The Blossoms with Darlene Love. — Merry Clayton

My philosophy is to take one day at a time. I don't worry about the future. Tomorrow is even out of sight for me. — Bobby Darin

Even the best novels have their share of stinker lines. — Darin Strauss

I could have a roomful of awards and it wouldn't mean beans. — Bobby Darin

I drilled holes in the floor of the club, and it's sinking. — Bobby Darin

Sin in the Second City is a masterful history lesson, a harrowing biography, and - best of all - a superfun read. The Everleigh story closely follows the turns of American history like a little sister. I can't recommend this book loudly enough. — Darin Strauss

My first book is about twins who are attached: two people who are joined and can't escape each other. — Darin Strauss

You can work really hard and well on something, and someone you respect might hate it; worse, they're not empirically wrong for doing so. This is scary, especially for people who haven't been published. — Darin Strauss

The sex element is the most important in the business. You must sell sex. — Bobby Darin

I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy. — Darin Strauss

I tried to convince myself once, when I was a teenager, that I felt God. Alone in the sanctuary, accompanying my mom on an evening errand to the church. I stared at the ceiling and drew deep breath as quickly as I could. I told our youth minister in his ball cap that I had felt Him. That I was blessed.
But in the end, it was only the wind and the rain, making noise in the darkness. — Darin Bradley

Mr. Burns is a father symbol to me, and you can omit the word symbol. — Bobby Darin

Nearly everything I do is part of a master plan to make me the most important entertainer in the world. — Bobby Darin

I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories. — Darin Strauss

In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc. — Darin Strauss