David's Quotes & Sayings

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age. — David Chipperfield

If I would need to make a prediction I still believe Kaplan's scenario is very plausible. — David Korten

A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance. — David Mamet

Could you penetrate this palace, Prince Kheldar?" King Anheg challenged.
"I already have, your Majesty," Silk said modestly, "a dozen times or more."
Anheg looked at Rhodar with one raised eyebrow.
Rhodar coughed slightly. "It was some time ago, Anheg. Nothing serious. I was just curious about something, that's all."
"All you had to do was ask," Anheg said in a slightly injured tone.
"I didn't want to bother you," Rhodar said with a shrug. "Besides, it's more fun to do it the other way. — David Eddings

People who have extremely limited knowledge of The Bible or its implications may still choose to classify themselves as Christians on the basis that their parents do so - they may never even give it a second thought. This phenomenon of our nation's children inheriting religion is often overlooked because the perpetrator guilty of indoctrination is not a dictator or cult leader, but instead it is most often their own parents or close family members. — David G. McAfee

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out. — David Lynch

A sinner is justified and reconciled with God the moment he truly believes in the person and atoning work of Christ. However, the evidence that he truly believed and was genuinely converted in that moment is that he goes on believing and confessing all the days of his life. This is not to say that the true believer will be immune to doubts, free from failure, or unhindered in his growth to maturity. However, it does mean that the God who began a good work in him will continue perfecting that work until the final day.7 Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.8 However, the evidence of saving faith is a genuine and enduring confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ throughout the believer's life. — Paul David Washer

160 million-plus people call themselves Christians. They go to church once a month at least. That's a lot of people. — David A.R. White

But now it's the museum backdrop for the exhibition of grief. — David Levithan

As a director, you have to go in with a really, really, really clear picture of what you want. That's the point of my commentaries. It's so difficult because you're the harshest critic. — David Slade

The ISI is above all a paramilitary organization. It doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. It's not a very good spy agency, but it's good at running covert action. — David Ignatius

I think the one thing that's going on here is that people are saying, uh-oh, the Chinese economy might be slowing more than we thought and the government is having a hard time stimulating it again. — David Wessel

How about this John Kerry controversy? So he's out there in California, tells some kind of joke and it backfires. He's saying he botched the joke ... This guy can lose elections he's not even in. — David Letterman

You say that someday your prince will come. More than anything, you want him to reply, "But what if your prince is right under your nose?" Instead he says, "Well, as long as he's mot one of those deposed princes ... "
You wish he weren't such a prince. You wish he were a frog. — David Levithan

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh. — David Foster Wallace

Mr. Bloemker moved closer. He smelled like a wet diaper. "What is it," he asked, looking over Lenore's shoulder.
"If it's what I think it is," said Lenore, "it's a sort of joke. A what do you call it. An antinomy."
"An antinomy?"
Lenore nodded. "Gramma really likes antinomies. I think this guy here," looking down at the drawing on the back of the label, "is the barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves."
Mr. Bloemker looked at her. "A barber?"
"The big killer question," Lenore said to the sheet of paper, "is supposed to be whether the barber shaves himself. I think that's why his head's exploded, here."
"Beg pardon?"
"If he does, he doesn't, and if he doesn't, he does. — David Foster Wallace

The Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit has suggested that the important thing is not a person's identity but his or her identifications.

Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life — David Kaufmann

A young man's ambition, can there be a more fleeting prospect? — David Baldacci

Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. — David Foster Wallace

In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre. — David Wenham

Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns's teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn't be disappointed or depressed. — Albert Ellis

I came into my teens unaware that most Americans, blacks as well as whites, were ignorant of the main facts of Negro history. And so it was the facts of other histories that I found most intriguing. I fell into a U.S. history major by chance late in my second year at Fisk University. — David Levering Lewis

It is not unpleasant to hold someone else's warm teeth in your hand ... — David Sedaris

When [Imam] Samudra was tried, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'His lawyer, Qaidar Faisal, later delivered an official defence submission.' The defense summation praised the Taliban and its version of Islam and concluded with this telling detail: 'Mr. Faisal also quoted from American satirist Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and other anti-western texts.' — David T. Hardy

Marx's critique of free markets and free trade can shed as much devastating light on our own actually existing capitalism as it did for the capitalism of Marx's own time and place. — David Harvey

Once you're president, you can't go anywhere without causing trouble. President Obama shows up in China, he's chewing gum, they go crazy. A big stink because the president's chewing gum. And you think, the Chinese are so easygoing about human rights. What's the problem? — David Letterman

February's so gloomy in this part of the world", said Mrs. de Roo, "don't you think? It's not so much a month as a twenty-eight day long Monday morning — David Mitchell

Trust in someone means that we no longer have to protect ourselves. We believe we will not be hurt or harmed by the other, at least not deliberately. We trust his or her good intentions, though we know we might be hurt by the way circumstances play out between us. We might say that hurt happens; it's a given of life. Harm is inflicted; it's a choice some people make. — David Richo

It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment. — David Sedaris

God's grace doesn't always come in comfortable forms. But it's still grace, and it's still evidence that He loves us. — Paul David Tripp

Drawing his sword, he gazed down at the gleaming blade. 'I pledge you to the destruction of Sparta,' he whispered. Raising the weapon high he pointed it to the south-east and, though the city was far beyond his range of vision, he pictured the sword poised above it with the sun's harsh light turning it to fire. — David Gemmell

Facing fear is better than running from it," he said.
"What if it's fear you can't beat?"
"Then it might be better to be dead," he answered. — David Baldacci

Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing. — Mike Tyson

That's our plan? We're going to walk fifty kilometers, right past the Germans, to a poultry collective that maybe didn't get burned down, grab a dozen eggs, and come home?"
"Well, anything would sound ridiculous if said it in that tone of voice."
"Tone of ... I'm asking you a question! — David Benioff

Even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing. — George Harrison

Outstanding American men seem to see power as something you use in order to correct someone who's wrong, to change them, to show them you see more in this situation than the boss does. Outstanding American women, on the other hand, see power as a resource, something you can use to get people together, to gain commitment. — David McClelland

Because I think whenever you sit down with another human being who would absolutely disagree with you on every issue, you learn about them as a person and you relate, in human terms, and it's much more difficult for either side to dismiss out of hand, like that person's a freak, that person's a Nazi. — David Cross

It's a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind. — David Mitchell

Given the choice between four perfectly acceptable movies, they invariably opt for a walk through the Picasso museum or a tour of the cathedral, saying, "I didn't come all the way to Paris so I can sit in the dark." They make it sound so bad. "Yes," I say, "but this is the French dark. It's ... darker than the dark we have back home. — David Sedaris

No one wants to know I set my alarm and get up 8, but I think it's too weird to sleep in too late. — David Spade

That we can never know," answered the wolf angrily. "That's for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we're bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything. — David Clement-Davies

In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women's faces. The photos were eight by ten inches, and showed women facing the camera or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the eyes of the women were dilated, and in the other half they were not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making. None of them said, "I noticed her pupils were two millimeters larger in this photo than in this other one." Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than others, for reasons they couldn't quite put a finger on. — David Eagleman

I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes. — David Foster Wallace

I always have to go out to work even if it's just a desk somewhere or an office or the British Library. — David Morrissey

That's the dirty little secret of Mormon growth. Lots of baptisms don't necessarily translate into long-term membership. — David Campbell

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask. — David Byrne

If you demonize a person's pleasure, then you can control his or her life. — David Levithan

A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we're constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. — David Graeber

As a lawyer who has dealt in defamation, I know that someone's reputation has to be lowered in the eyes of right-thinking people to sue. — David Hunt

I would hope it's better, but I'm actually acknowledging now that I want to explore all these levels from a whisper to a scream with this gift I've been given. — David Coverdale

God's great love in Christ - Christians are compelled to willing, joyful, urgent, faith-driven, grace-saturated, God-glorifying work on behalf of the poor. — David Platt

Amir Khan will come back and he will win back the world title because I know the guy personally, and I know what he's made off. There's no quit in this guy. — David Haye

You know what I love best about baseball? The pine tar, the resin, the grass, the dirt - and that's just in the hot-dogs. — David Letterman

I could never feel like that about any public issue. Sometimes I wish I could. For me, if I'm honest, politics is background, news, almost entertainment. Something you switch on and off, like the TV. What I really worry about, what I can't switch off at will is, oh, sex, or dying or losing my hair. Private things. We're private people, aren't we, our generation? We make a clear distinction between private and public life; and the important things, the things that make us happy or unhappy are private. Live is private. Property is private. Parts are private. That's why the young radicals call for fucking in the streets. It's not just a cheap shock-tactic. It's a serious revolutionary proposition. — David Lodge

If you're subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough - like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let's say - it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is really a salesman and really ultimately doesn't give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself. — David Foster Wallace

Time and faith will heal all wounds. — S.A. David

After all, it isn't the facts of one's environment, but one's attitude toward them, that determines whether one will be defeated or victorious. — David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.

The world is constantly in a race to the top, in terms of there's a limited amount of capital and you've got to figure where it's going. And if your currency is weakening, that means you're paying a load. — David Malpass

Unfortunately, the world does not always act in a manner consistent with one's plans for it. — Peter David

I just think that the people who say: 'That's not true' when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn't get any laughs when they told their story. — David Sedaris

Nothing is more important to England's arrangements for the World Cup than the state of David Beckham's foot. — Tony Blair

One's fate, obviously, will either be for the better or for the worse, depending on the choices made by the spiritual will. — David R. Hawkins

When people give you a writing assignment, they're asking what you think. That's the very opposite of being an actor. When you're an actor, no one wants to hear what you think. — David Rakoff

I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from. — David Foster Wallace

So we still need a permanent fix. The president would sign the Dream Act tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. That's ultimately the only way to fix this, is for congressional action. — David Plouffe

If I don't shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever just be.-- Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist — Rachel Cohn

And the very fact of how you speak somehow influences who you are. The way you move, the way you think, it seeps into your being, and it's quite hard to really break that down entirely. — David Tennant

The trick is to ensure not so much that what you are doing is, for you, the right thing, all the time (how, ultimately, could you know that for sure?) but that you are firmly in the driver's seat with a functioning process for discovering and engaging with your best choice. — David Allen

The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks;many a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom. — Henry David Thoreau

I've always thought of myself as a realist. I can remember fighting with my professors about it in grad school. The world that I live in consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options, most of which are subsidized by corporations that want to sell me things. The whole way that the world acts on my nerve endings is bound up with stuff that the guys with the leather patches on their elbows would consider pop or trivial or ephemeral. I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water 100 years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in. — David Foster Wallace

That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest. — Henry David Thoreau

You and David could both be right. Maybe human beings are programmed ... to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it's human nature doesn't make it bad, Tally. Besides, we had a whole city of pretties to choose from, and we chose each other.-Zane — Scott Westerfeld

it doesn't matter how old you are, how old your child was when he or she died, or the particular manner of your child's death; the hole in your heart never heals over. You can function in life, but you are doomed to fall far short of that contentment which had once been available to you. Soon — David Bagby

Jesus says, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5). You see these dynamics when David arrives at King Saul's camp, bringing food for his older brothers. David is surprised to hear Goliath taunting the Israelites and their God. He is shocked that no one has the courage to challenge Goliath and blurts out, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Samuel 17:26). David reacts to the split between Israel's public faith and its battlefield ... — Paul Miller

Halloween is the beginning of the holiday shopping season. That's for women. The beginning of the holiday shopping season for men is Christmas Eve. — David Letterman

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways. — David Mamet

We're still going to be learning in Heaven. We will still be developing and are not yet absolutely perfect. That's what the future is all about - to continue the learning process that we have begun here. We've all still got a lot to learn! — David Berg

I worry
about you
and i tell him
don't
and he says
that's exactly
why — David Levithan

But having said all of that, that still doesn't account for a lot of the increase in popularity which stems, I think, from Lincoln's personal characteristics. — David Herbert Donald

One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards will be at one's throat all the sooner. — David Mitchell

I'm a working actor so I never really pick a film because of a genre, and I don't really turn them down because of genre. Anything that's unlike the picture I just finished is always more interesting. — David Keith

Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way. — David Gergen

It was the artist's duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience's job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours. — David Sedaris

Central to living a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact, regardless of whether we kiss or we wound. — David Rakoff

Ignorance is the world's most curable affliction. — Jeri Smith-Ready

As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature's leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades - nature's framework of their picture - so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry, but which demand the colored air and the bowers of poetry to be the setting of their charms. — David Swing

And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect — David Nicholls

That's what nobody admits about men, how needy they are. — David Burr Gerrard

Nature's solution to pollution is dilution. — David Wolfe

Don't be too precious about your craft ... there's only 26 letters and 12 notes, and Shakespeare and Beethoven said it all better than any of us ever will — David Foster

Music is a treasure and a love and a delight. It clears people's souls and lifts them high. — David Rodigan

I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist. — David Levithan

Family doesn't go one way. It goes every way. We help each other, we protect each other, and we die for each other, if that's what it takes. — David Estes

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se. — David Foster Wallace

Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable. — David Bowie

The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don't have an opinion on that and it's important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my capacity right now. — David Westin

So, I mean, there's still vast swaths of the city that are suffering from a lack of jobs and poor housing and poor public schools, but they are building momentum - you know, techies, foodies, artists, musicians, all coming to Detroit. So there is this vibrancy. You see it in the newspapers every day - some story about the new Detroit. — David Maraniss

If it's a role like this one, an actual live person, a legend, there's lots of material laid out. — David Strathairn

When it comes to true dance, it's not about how you look, it's all about the joy you feel. — David Levithan

An instrument s a tool that is actively used to change something, and God has called all of his people to be instruments of change in his redemptive hands — Paul David Tripp