Doing Great Work Quotes & Sayings

I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot movie. It's about doing good work. — Emilio Estevez

The child destined to be a writer is vulnerable to every wind that blows. Now warm, now chill, next joyous, then despairing, the essence of his nature is to escape the atmosphere about him, no matter how stable, even loving. No ties, no binding chains, save those he forges for himself. Or so he thinks. But escape can be delusion, and what he is running from is not the enclosing world and its inhabitants, but his own inadequate self that fears to meet the demands which life makes upon it. Therefore create. Act God. Fashion men and women as Prometheus fashioned them from clay, and, by doing this, work out the unconscious strife within and be reconciled. While in others, imbued with a desire to mold, to instruct, to spread a message that will inspire the reader and so change his world, though the motive may be humane and even noble
many great works have done just this
the source is the same dissatisfaction, a yearning to escape. — Daphne Du Maurier

The church is not supposed to be a society of perfect people doing great work. It's a society of forgiven sinners repaying their unpayable debt of love by working for Jesus's kingdom in every way they can, knowing themselves to be unworthy of the task. — N. T. Wright

If there is any substance in what I have said, will not the great missionary bodies of India, to whom she owes a deep debt of gratitude for what they have done and are doing, do still better and serve the spirit of Christianity better by dropping the goal of proselytising while continuing their philanthropic work? — Mahatma Gandhi

I've loved doing 'E.R.' for the quality of the writing and the great people I get to work with. — Julie Bowen

How many times do we hear: 'Come on, you Christians, be a little bit more normal, like other people, be reasonable!' This is real snake charmer's talk: 'Come on, just be like this, okay? A little bit more normal, don't be so rigid ... ' But behind it is this: 'Don't come here with your stories, that God became man!' The Incarnation of the Word, that is the scandal behind all of this! We can do all the social work we want, and they will say: 'How great the Church is, it does such good social work. But if we say that we are doing it because those people are the flesh of Christ, then comes the scandal. And that is the truth, that is the revelation of Jesus: that presence of Jesus incarnate. — Pope Francis

When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them. — Mark Harmon

If I was a complete slacker who was just doing nothing but traveling, I don't know if I would have the discipline to be productive and create this job, and on the other hand, if I was always disciplined and productive, I don't think I would have that mystical connection that lead to great work. — Karan Bajaj

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which one attempts to do. There is a sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in all its parts-which the superficial man, who leaves his work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns work into art. The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic. — William Matthews

I think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I don't put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their category. I just see us doing some work. — Martin Scorsese

I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but I just find myself a little bit more neurotic. — Elisha Cuthbert

You have as great an opportunity for satisfaction in the performance of your duty as I do in mine. The progress of this work will be determined by our joint efforts. Whatever your calling, it is as fraught with the same kind of opportunity to accomplish good as is mine. What is really important is that this is the work of the Master. Our work is to go about doing good as did He. — Gordon B. Hinckley

'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience. — Dario Argento

All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition? — Van Jones

I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs. — Daniel Keyes

I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess. — Blaise Pascal

On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you're doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you're mediocre. You're free to contribute. — Seth Godin

Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening - not always, but it can feel that way when we're deep in the middle of it. — Ryan Holiday

Working with Woody Allen was extremely gratifying. He has such a vast catalog of great work that doing one of his films was somewhat unreal. — Theo James

For me what we need is a great deal of fiscal stimulus to show the UK is open for business. We need to upskill our workforce. I'm very much in tune with the work our chancellor is doing. — Andrea Leadsom

I remembered going to confession to a great priest, Father Moriarty of South William Street. I told him, "I shot a man, Father." "Did you think you were doing right? Had you no qualms about it?" he asked me. I told him I didn't have any qualms, I thought I was doing right, and he said, "Carry on with the good work," and gave me absolution. — Tim Pat Coogan

The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great! — Elizabeth Warren

Polo, racing and horse shows all are doing great work to help the farmer and rancher to raise better horses. — Will Rogers

In the great depression, things could only be set right by causing the idle plant to work again ... Roosevelt ... spent billions of public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him as 'the madman in the White House.' ... [It's one more] striking example of inability to learn from experience. — Bertrand Russell

Dave Chappelle is about as gifted as it gets, as a performer and comedian.It's always great to watch him work. He started around fourteen and he's in his forties now, so he's probably been doing it for close to thirty years. He's brilliant. — Ted Alexandro

It's great when a director like Cameron Crowe can take what you do and fit it into what he's doing. If someone's a fan of you already, they can take what you do and make it work for what they're doing. You don't know their vision, and you're thinking, 'How is this guy going to take what I do and make it work in this movie?' — J. B. Smoove

I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in. — Harvey Pekar

Insomnia is a very prevalent issue. It's a women's health issue, and I chose to talk about it because so many people have experienced it to varying degrees. For me, I'm doing great now, but it took a lot of work to figure out how to get back to sleep. I had to change some of my habits. I developed some pretty bad sleep ritual habits. — Jenny Lewis

We grow up going to school, where you get a gold star, you get the A-plus," she says. "At work you're constantly being evaluated. Then you become a homemaker and suddenly nobody is giving you feedback. Suddenly no one is paying attention to what you're doing. Blogging is a way to get this validation from other people. You put up a recipe and people go, 'Hey, that's a great photograph.'" Clearly blogs can give emotional value to housework. But if a blogger is actually making money from a blog, even a little bit of money, it cane make the blog even more validating. — Emily Matchar

In general, I'm pretty busy with the other things I charted ... I bought a piece of a sports-tech company. We do a lot of work with at the Clippers. I think that'll be great. We're really looking at the possibility of extending and building a real over-the-top distribution channel with value-added services for the Clippers, that could lead to other partnerships and investments. But most of the stuff I'm looking at isn't because I say, "Hey, I want to invest." It sort of comes around from the work we're doing with the Clippers. — Steve Ballmer

The first element in a symmetrical life is work. Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God three-fourths of life remains unsanctified. The proof that work is religious is that most of Christ's life was spent in work. During a large part of the first thirty years of His life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and yokes and household furniture. Christ's public ministry occupied only about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great bulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks, and ever since then work has had a new meaning. — Henry Drummond

For all that Tron wanted to be, it ultimately had to be a fun ride for the audience and I was going to be one of the comic characters, and he was really on top of that. He was having such a good time doing it. That's my memory of it. I'd love to work with him again. I think he's great. — James Frain

I love doing TV. It's so great for my world as a mom, as someone who likes to have a steady job and go to work feeling secure because I'm with a family. — Ming-Na Wen

These days, I find I'm applying a little more patience to my process. If I look back on my work, I can see those songs I bailed on could have been better, that had those great two verses and then I kind of coasted from there. These days, if a song is giving me trouble, I put it aside and pick it up later, and keep doing that, for a year if I have to, until it takes shape. — Ani DiFranco

The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work. — Alexander MacLaren

I have a horror of being self-indulgent and wasting time, and there is that risk in doing this kind of work. Are you totally deluded in sitting down at a desk every day and trying to write something? Is it self-indulgent, or might it possibly lead to something worthwhile? At a certain point I decided to keep on because I felt like the work was getting better, and I was taking great pleasure in that. — Ben Fountain

Americans should never forget that the founders of this country, like all who have served her in uniform, were willing to die defending everything its flag represents. It's so easy to get lost in the controversies that divide us. But I believe, no matter what our race, religion, or beliefs may be, that Americans should be able to come together to keep our country rooted in what made it great: a land of opportunity, a place where people can make something of themselves, limited only by their imaginations and willingness to work hard; a country where we can all come together, whatever our differences, for the greater good; a country of hands up, not handouts, where we try to live by the meaning of the words "Love thy neighbor," and put as much effort into helping others as we do helping ourselves. By doing those things, we can continue to live up to the idea of "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. — Marcus Luttrell

The great thing about doing a show in New York is that you can work until the night before. — Robert Longo

If I didn't want to work for a couple of years, I wouldn't have to-it's a great feeling, to know I'm doing it because I want to do it. — Tracey Emin

If all the people around you are happy with you, you are not doing great work. — Darren Hardy

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!'" Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel. Each spouse then should give him- or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory. — Timothy Keller

As a leadership coach, one of the questions I always ask myself is, "Does this leader lead in a way that is compatible with humans?" or some version of that. People are designed to function with energy and use their gifts and talents to work toward fruitful outcomes. They do that from the moment they wake up in the morning until they lie down at night. From making the coffee to making computers, people have what it takes to get it done, if the right ingredients are present and the wrong ones are not. The leader's job is to lead in ways such that people can do what they are best at doing: using their gifts and their brains to get great results. — Henry Cloud

All those artists and writers who bemoan how hard the work is, and oh, how tedious the creative process, and oh, what a tortured genius they are. Don't buy into it. . . . As if difficulty and struggle and torture somehow confer seriousness upon your chosen work. Doing great work simply because you love it, sounds, in our culture, somehow flimsy, and that's a failing of our culture, not of the choice of work that artists make." This — Timothy Ferriss

The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It's no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote. — Daniel J. Levitin

But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in America, even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than doing now. — Charles Dickens

When you don't have, or feel that you don't have, an extra moment to read philosophy, history, or science, when great literature, plays, and novels are as foreign to you as hieroglyphics, do you have any cahnce of seeing your work, career, or life in a new light? You might be doing well in the race, but it's the same race essentially down the same track with the same opponents that may prove to be less than sufficient in enabling you to get those kinds of things done that you want to have completed. — Jeff Davidson

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right. — Gustave Flaubert

Many years ago I developed a theory of mutual exclusivity. I had observed in my own life that either God solved a problem or I solved the problem but both God and I did not work on the same problem at the same time. If I decided to solve it then God had better things to do than to help me. If I decided to turn the problem over to God then God would resolve the issue. When I refer to my solving the problem, I am referring to taking wilful action and deciding what the correct resolution is. If my family needs food, go out and work to earn money and feed them. There is a great difference between detachment and doing nothing. — Heather Cardin

In doing my podcast, I do find that I tend to try out bits that I then try on stage later that day. If they work, great, and if they don't, I regret having talked about it on the podcast. — Kurt Braunohler

One day a man came to watch him work on a painting he was doing of Jesus and his disciples. The man sat there all day, and Leonardo only made one stroke the whole time. 'You stood there all day and only made one stroke,' the man said. Leonardo just looked at him. 'Yeah, but it was the right stroke,' he said." Dan sat quietly for a second. I was not sure if he was angry or if he didn't see the relevance of the analogy. Then, all of a sudden, he burst out laughing. "That's pretty good, Nerburn," he said. He reached over and pushed me playfully. "What was that guy's name?" "Leonardo da Vinci." "I've got to remember that. Leonardo Duvishhi. You sure he wasn't an Indian?" "Might have been Wapashaw's long-lost uncle," I said. Dan laughed heartily. "This is a good day, Nerburn. I'm glad you came to visit me." The hawk cut great arcs against the towering sky. The eastern horizon was filling with pinks and lavenders. "So am I, Dan," I said. "It's been too long. — Kent Nerburn

I have huge respect for women who go out of their homes and have the courage to make their own destiny. And let me tell you, Indian women are doing a great job. There are those who work because they have no option but to earn, and then there are those who do it because they have the right talent. I respect both. — Shilpa Shetty

All the truly great stand-ups say, 'I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work.' To me, in the end, the surest thing is work. — Patton Oswalt

Soaps are great. You learn to work very fast - some say superficially, but that's not really true. You do some very serious character work. I've never had any feelings about a stigma attached to it, and nowadays there seems to be less snobbery about what you do. More and more big names are doing TV and commercials and voiceovers. — Charles Shaughnessy

I've concluded that God is as much, if not more, interested in doing a great work in us as he is in doing a great work through us. — Jared C. Wilson

Writing is the great skill, the creative skill. The acting is more an interpretative skill. And the thrill for me is the moment when I think of something. And then the challenge is how to get that funny idea to work in terms of the structure and that kind of thing, which is - and that's what I really love doing. — John Cleese

It's like every time you have one of these, you're sort of - your lease is renewed another five years. And that's kind of great for me 'cause that's all I really want to be doing still at this point, like just making records and getting to work with, like, artists that I think are exciting. — Mark Ronson

But being honest in my work and life has kind of set me free. I'm so much more than my pain. Oh my god, I sound like my therapist! Call her, she can vouch that I'm doing great. — Jessie Kahnweiler

Upon learning that Washington intended to reject the mantle of emperor, no less an authority than George III allegedly observed, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." True to his word, on December 22, 1783, Washington surrendered his commission to the Congress, then meeting in Annapolis: "Having now finished the work assigned me," he announced, "I now retire from the great theater of action." In so doing, he became the supreme example of the leader who could be trusted with power because he was so ready to give it up. — Joseph J. Ellis

I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great. — Anne Hathaway

All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place. — Roger Bacon

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

Any work that you are doing at present is a great work. — Sunday Adelaja

I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly. — Lionel Sosa

I've worked with volunteers before," he began. "It's important not to ... not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don't necessarily take that attitude. They feel they're working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch. — Ken Follett

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.
And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share. — Jerome K. Jerome

Wendell and Tanya and I spoke at length about one of his themes that drives me with constancy, that of "good work." One aspect of this topic that I often regurgitate is his dislike for a society that celebrates the notion of "Thank God it's Friday!" Taking this position, people are necessarily saying that they despise five of every seven days of their lives. He said he first noticed it when he was teaching college, that people would answer the question "How are you doing?" with "Well, pretty good, for a Monday." This exposed a joylessness that filled Mr. Berry with concern. "It's a great harbinger of what's to come. If you don't like the classes about what you're going to do, you're not going to like going to do it." "More — Nick Offerman

[Andrei Sakharov] won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist? What sort of physician would stay married to a mate that cracked?
"Anything interesting happen at work today, honeybunch?"
"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with chicken pox? — Kurt Vonnegut

Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better ... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems. — Michael Pollan

Holly Hunter has been doing great work forever. — Patricia Clarkson

Theory did a great work pant, and everyone was doing denim. But no one was making a trouser sexy, or the focus of an outfit ... So, that's what I set out to do. — Stacey Bendet

Watch your attitude. I don't mean to sound like so much of an old head, but there is another generation behind me, out there, doing it now. I find that, with the whole hip-hop generation, there's a lot of attitude. Whether it's confidence or arrogance or whichever, I will always say to a young guy, "Nobody wants to work with an asshole." You know, you can still be a great player. You can still play all of the baddest licks in the world. But if you don't have a good attitude, nobody's going to work with you. — Christian McBride

Names generate meaning in a short amount of space - they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level. — Joshua Ferris

You hope you can fix it with the personnel that you have. On offense, we are doing some great things, but we did not execute. This group of men that I represent likes to work hard. — Les Miles

Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own. — Alan Menken

The Shepherd laughed too. "I love doing preposterous things," he replied. "Why, I don't know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than mother which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat. That is my special work," he added with the light of a great joy in his face. "Transforming things - to take Much-Afraid, for instance, and to transform her into - " He broke off and then went on laughingly. "Well, we shall see later on what she finds herself transformed into. — Hannah Hurnard

It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

A lot of my energy is going to Code for America, Jen Pahlka's non-profit startup. We're doing a lot of great work teaching government how to apply technology and changing the culture of government. — Tim O'Reilly

I'm having the time of my life. I've never looked forward to going to work so much every day. I'm loving it; it's great. It's what I love to do and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. — Sarah Chalke

The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.
The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.
The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.
It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.
It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.
It's about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.
And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it. — Anne Lamott

In order to change, however, you have to be willing to acknowledge the need for change - in other words, you have to come to terms with the fact that everything in your life isn't perfect. There is this concept - among not just Scientologists, but everyone - that we are all supposed to have it together. Whether it's our work, love lives, family relationships, or even feelings about ourselves, we need to present this idealized image to others. We are so conditioned when asked "How are you?" to say "Good" or "Great." But why not "I don't know. I hate everyone today." Why are we so scared to be judged imperfect or to talk about how we really feel? To be authentic? If we can just tell each other how and what we are really doing, step outside of what we believe others think we should be, the result can be therapeutic. — Leah Remini

That doesn't matter. Gorky's a vain man. We must bind him with cables to the Party," replied Stalin.3 It worked: during the kulak liquidation, Gorky unleashed his hatred of the backward peasants in Pravda: "If the enemy does not surrender, he must be exterminated." He toured concentration camps and admired their re-educational value. He supported slave labour projects such as the Belomor Canal which he visited with Yagoda, whom he congratulated: "You rough fellows do not realize what great work you're doing!"4 Yagoda, — Simon Sebag Montefiore

I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybody sandwiches and then the doors close and then all the great creatives are doing the work. — Jake Johnson

Here are five rules of thumb, should all your fingers on one hand turn into thumbs and you decide to rule them.
1. There is no day too dull, no problem too great that cannot be fixed with a couple of plays of 'rush rush' by Paula Abdul.
2. The amount of time it takes for you to get over him is exactly the same amount of time it will take for him to start missing you.
3. Talking about exercise burns exactly the same amount of calories as doing exercise.
4. 'When someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!'
5. The office sucks.
Four of these are true. And one - is wrong! Damn wrong! — Hadley Freeman

My parents were exactly like millions of other Americans who had a fire in their belly to build something of their own, and in so doing they exemplified the dignity of work, the opportunity available in this great nation to those willing to work, and they left the world a bit better than it was when they first showed up. — Bob Beauprez

It used to be trained professionals doing animation and they were great. Now they have celebrities and famous actors doing the voices, but that does not always work. But I think this film turned out really well, partly because the three of us (me, Ray and Denis) are comedians who are used to doing solo acts and doing certain types of voices. The three of us are New York guys, we all came up the same way in the profession and we are all edgy and enjoy doing family movies. It was a good combination I think. — John Leguizamo

I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film. — Mary Ellen Mark

Everybody struggles to come up with stuff that no one has ever seen before. It's a fine line between trying to get creative and doing something that's new, fresh and different - yet, for me, something that's based in reality that would actually work in these situations. These are the keys to great fight scenes and action sequences. — Steven Seagal

No way you're calling Ben. We already have a plan. Were going to his house, and I'm going to ring the doorbell with some fake lab work for Chemistry, and then Taylor is going to set off his car alarm while I year through his room looking for evidence."
"Wow. Great plan, Kate. Just out of curiosity, what exactly are you planning on doing when he comes back to his room to find you knee-deep in his secret Brotherhood bullshit?" Liam spat his words at me like nails.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have a better idea? Ooh, I know. Maybe you could call you're brother and have him light his garage on fire or something. — Lisa Roecker

The longer you are in acting business, the more you cherish the times when you're working with people that do great work, and can figure out how to enjoy themselves while they're doing the great work. — Scott Bakula

Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck: under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months' standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made. — Charles Dickens

I love how the men stand around cooking the barbie while the women have done all the work beforehand doing the marinade and making the salads and then everybody says, 'what a great barbie' to the guy cooking. A barbecue is just the ultimate blokes' pastime, isn't it? — Curtis Stone

...use design as a secret disguise to infiltrate whatever world you want to go into. If you do that over and over again, and then translate that interest and curiosity into the work that you're doing, you'll do great. — Michael Bierut

I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.' — Ryan McGinley

But good writers have a reason for doing things the way they do them, and if you tinker with their work, taking it upon yourself to neutralize a slightly eccentric usage or zap a comma or sharpen the emphasis of something that the writer was deliberately keeping obscure, you are not helping. In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you go out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn't poking up - unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out. — Mary Norris

Ecstasy is our very nature; not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. That's why people look so tired, because misery is really hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because they are doing something against nature. — Rajneesh

It's great when people appreciate your work, but I don't know how seriously to take it. The amazing thing is that I found something so early that I can support myself doing, and that can even be extremely lucrative, but I love it either way. — Adrien Brody

Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. — James Salter

When the Labor Department is forced to relent and let these visitors do this work it is of course all legal. But it makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won't do? One thing is certain in this hungry world; no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the field for lack of harvesters. — Ronald Reagan

It's very exciting to be able to just work in this business, let alone on stuff you are extremely proud of. So it does make me a little nervous, because 'Breaking Bad' is so special. It's great being part of something so great because people pay attention to you, hopefully because you're doing good work. — Aaron Paul

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace. — Pablo Casals