Hard Questions Quotes & Sayings

Empathy is always perched precariously between gift and invasion ... Empathy isn't just remembering to say 'that must be really hard'
it's figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination ... Empathy means realizing trauma has no discreet edges.p7 — Leslie Jamison

While the Bible does speak clearly on many matters - you'd have to be deaf not to hear the condemnations of murder, stealing, adultery, greed, etc. - there are, in fact, many questions at the margins of each of these, for which there are not clear answers. If you are not a pastor it's easier to maintain the comforting illusion that these hard cases are rare. But they are not. — Ken Wilson

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I'm surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you're different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can't be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren't like that. You still ask questions. You're still looking for the answers. — Ryan O'Connell

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives. — Parker J. Palmer

Here are some questions I am constantly noodling over: Do you splurge or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it's your last, or do you save your money on the chance you'll live twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really all going to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in American is so unbelievable delicious? And what about chocolate? — Nora Ephron

War was so many things, and not the least of which confusion. What was wrong? What was right, for that matter?
Was killing right or wrong? Brave or cowardly? Human nature or unnatural behavior of creatures too smart for their own good?
Loyalty, betrayal, hate, love, fear, friendship, teamwork, violence. War was connected to all of these. Hard work, sadness, suffering, discipline, chaos, questions, few answers, strategy, bravery, foolishness, death, life.
And both winning and losing were only two small aspects of the word war. — Kenzie Kovacs-Szabo

It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself up. — Terry Pratchett

The difference between a serial killer and a saint is environment. That's a very hard thing to accept because that raises a lot of questions — Jacque Fresco

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people. — Kiana Tom

The American people are not naifs who yearn for isolationism, but they are starting to ask some hard questions about the way we have been doing business for 50 years, and it may well be time to grant the French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, and a host of others their wishes for independence from us: polite friendship - but no alliances, no bases, no money, no trade concessions, and no more begging for the privilege of protecting them. — Victor Davis Hanson

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

You can't find the answers on the bottom of a whiskey glass, but if you look hard enough you'll forget the questions. — George Patterson

(The Revsons apparently did not like a young psychologist named Joyce Brothers, who appeared as an expert on boxing. Thus the questions given her were exceptionally hard - they even asked her the names of referees - in the desire to get her off the show; their strategy had no effect: She became the second person to win $64,000.) — David Halberstam

I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers. — Bernhard Schlink

When young, we're anxious - understandably - to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you - in particular you, of this generation - may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ...
And this is actually O.K. If we're going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously - as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended. — George Saunders

It's not that I believe women are more ethical. I will say that one of women's greatest weaknesses is probably our greatest strength. We are incredibly hard on each other. We ask all the questions. Men are more easygoing. If you've ever been in a group of women, you'll recognize this: Nobody gives one woman the opportunity to lead the way without asking a whole lot of questions. — Vicki Donlan

Being exposed to those beauty queens and Praying Mantises at the same time made me ask myself some hard questions. Would I have been so radical had I not been so fat? Could I have been one of the women on the other side parading my beauty of which I was so proud? As I stood there holding my JUDGE MEAT NOT WOMEN picket sign, I recalled all the people who had said to me throughout my life, "You've got such a pretty face." But they never finished the thought. The whole phrase is "You've got such a pretty face, too bad you're fat." But what if I weren't fat? Would I still have attacked this "Meat Parade" so fiercely? The truth is, my fat has informed my politics. And while I'd like to think I would have been just as ardent in my opposition to the objectification of women had I been thin, I'll never know for sure. — Camryn Manheim

Friends and family came and went, sometimes helping her with her tears, other times making her laugh. But even in her laughter there was something missing. She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live. But what was the point in living when there was no life in it? These questions went through her mind over and over until she reached the point of not wanting to wake up from her dreams
they were what felt real.
Deep down, she knew it was normal to feel like this, she didn't particularly think she was losing her mind. She knew that one day she would be happy again and that this feeling would just be a distant memory. It was getting to that day that was the hard part. — Cecelia Ahern

I can't speak. There are too many negatives. Too many questions...And all the things these hard times have taken from me. All the things I've had to give up.

Except, perhaps, my dreams. — Katherine Longshore

Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.
And I was satisfied. More than satisfied
wonderfully at peace. There were answers to mmy hard questions
for now, I was content to leave them in my father's keeping. — Corrie Ten Boom

I was raised in a reform synagogue. I think we all bring with us a sense of when hard things happen to us, we find ourselves asking questions of why are these things happening to me at this time in my life. I think in that sense, there's a certain resonance that I carry. It's more of a spiritual resonance as opposed to particularly of Judaism. — Michael Stuhlbarg

When I had my confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals, [my son] Philip was 3 years old. And when I was called up to the chair he took it upon himself to run up and sit next to me in case any hard questions came up. — Samuel Alito

Kaidan had been captivated by the store owner's deep Texan accent. He asked a ridiculous number of questions just to keep the man talking. He then tried to repeat the man's accent when we got in the car. "Where are y'all young'uns headed? We got us some maps over yonder by them there h-apples."
I laughed out loud as he butchered the man's beautiful drawl.
"He did not say 'over yonder'!"
"I've always wanted to say that. I love Americans. You've got a nice little accent, though not nearly as wicked as his."
"I do?"
He nodded.
Aside from the occasional y'all, I didn't think I sounded Southern, but I guess it's hard to say about your own self. — Wendy Higgins

I'm calm," Rachel insisted. "Every time I'm around you, some monsters attack us. What's to be nervous about?"
"Look," I said. "I'm sorry about the band room. I hope they didn't kick you our or anything."
"Nah. They asked me a lot of questions about you. I played dumb."
"Was it hard?" Annabeth asked. — Rick Riordan

Math people are math people. When you approach them with investments and business, they don't just ask the soft questions but eventually get to the hard questions. — Paul Wachter

Be not frightened at the hard words "imposition," "imposture;" give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares, entertained angels. — Charles Lamb

We turned out to be good for each other. For a stitch of time all the hard questions went away and hid in dark places. — Lawrence Block

Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. "Miss O'Connor," he said, "why was the Misfit's hat black?" I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, "Miss O'Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?" "He does not," I said. He looked crushed. "Well, Miss O'Connor," he said, "what is the significance of the Misfit's hat?" I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that's what's happening to the teaching of literature. — Flannery O'Connor

They're all over me I smell their beer breath mixed with my sweat I can't answer all the questions, I can barely think straight Now I'm alone in the room To be hard you must be alone To withstand this shit you must be hard The logic works itself out right in front you Be alone as much as you can If you want to hit like a ton of fire You have to get to the essential number One — Henry Rollins

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won't be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may "hit" you - but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God's voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise "divine reading" of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading "not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you." This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it. — Timothy Keller

I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions. — Dana Spiotta

You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions."
Mary's eyes darkened and she looked away.
"Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking 'why' 'who' and making me think about my wasted life. — Olga Nunez Miret

Face the hard questions that life requires you to ask. Gather with other travelers on the narrow road, pilgrims who acknowledge their confusion and feel their fears. Then, together, live those questions in My Presence. — Larry Crabb

Derisively, Ronan said, 'No. The ancient Greeks didn't have a word for Blue.'
Everyone at the table looked at him.
'What the hell, Ronan?' said Adam.
'It's hard to imagine," Gansey mused, 'how this evidently successful classical education never seems to make it into your school papers.'
'They never ask the right questions,' Ronan replied. — Maggie Stiefvater

Alby had a gruff, unavailable way of teaching. He did the action as he wanted it done and your job was to copy it. He didn't suffer questions well and preferred to increase the work rather than stop and clarify technique. It was early March when I started. The only other students were a myopic woman, who was clearly better suited to yoga, and Crazy Chris. Alby called him this openly. Chris didn't mind. He was crazy. He couldn't generally remember his right from his left and anything past the most basic punches was beyond him. It didn't stop him talking constantly about how he was going to join the Turkish army. It didn't stop him hitting anything he could as hard as he could whenever he could, either. — Heath Lander

I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment. — John F. Kennedy

There exits within the ecclesia and among its citizens a phenomena I refer to as 'Spiritual Correctness'. Essentially it says: 'Don't say anything that could offend anyone, focus on what is right with the 'church' and its leadership, don't be critical, speak the truth in 'love', promote the status quo, don't make 'waves', don't call anyone 'out', respect 'authority', don't expose 'wrong-doing', cover those who 'spiritually abuse' others, keep it 'secret' within our family; don't ask any hard questions. Sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a highly dysfunctional family system. The only 'system' and its enablers that Jesus spoke out against vehemently was the religious system of His day and its leadership."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. — Vinod Khosla

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them ... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. — Noam Chomsky

Any objection to the carryings on of our present golden-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But we are winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world's treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no. — A.W. Tozer

One could go on for ever as to whether the paint should be thick or thin, whether to paint the woman or the square, hard-edge or soft, but after a while such questions become a bore. They are merely problems in aesthetics, having only to do with the outer man. — Lee Krasner

It's hard to keep on being civil when they ask you such annoying questions. — Olivia De Havilland

Ulturally, we are definitely seeing people being to ask hard questions. There's been a major shift over the last year. The NSA revelations played a big part but there are all sorts of other issues too, like inequality and gentrification in the Bay Area, and labor abuses everywhere from Amazon's warehouse, to Apple's factories, to start-ups like Uber and TaskRabbit. — Astra Taylor

Work hard at keeping in tune with the way your children think. Your efforts may not always bring the desired result, but we must do our part. Keep close contact with them. Teach them with regularity, both by word and by deed. Love them and let them know you care for them because of who they are and not for anything else. Answer their questions with candor and thoughtfulness. Do not ignore their struggles. Deal with their difficulties, and spare them a cynical attitude. Stay tuned in to their struggles. Most of us learn the hard way that our children were in a very different world in their own thoughts than we realized. — Ravi Zacharias

Ours was a hard love. We'd fallen hard into it, and we'd fought hard to keep it. Our kind of love didn't ask nicely. It took. It ravaged. It consumed the heart whole and asked questions later. The rewards were soul-deep and all-consuming, sweeping through like a wildfire. — Meredith Wild

Of course, the tricky thing about these little questions was that, once I started asking them, it was hard to stop. — Jenna Miscavige Hill

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? — Jakob Nielsen

The story line of Kings is so overcrowded, it's hard to keep track. The narrator complains, there's so much going on, Solomon can't love God "wholeheartedly." This is a crucial word. The new Jerusalem opens up a whole new layer of human problems. We are in a fluid world, full of lush possibilities. Religions, jobs, marriages, all forms of life feel like open questions. In this atmosphere, can anybody be "wholehearted" about anything? Cosmopolitan culture, when it thrives, is scary. But it is also thrilling, and the people love it: "Judah and Israel prospered, as many as the sand on the sea; they ate and drank and were happy. — Anonymous

It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer. — James Newman

She ran over the frost-laden grass in her bare feet and threw herself at him, grabbing on to his neck with both arms. She held him so tightly his spine cracked. She was sobbing. Bawling. Crying so hard her whole body was shaking. He didn't ask any questions, just wrapped himself around her. "I'm not okay," she said hoarsely between breaths. "Rhage ... I'm not okay." He closed his eyes and held on tight. — J.R. Ward

Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill? Herodotus, — John Steinbeck

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one ... Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil ... There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill? — John Steinbeck

If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it's hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the "Obama economy" and how it had affected his life. I don't doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he's made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. — J.D. Vance

So the professor takes the student's point seriously, and responds with a concise but adequate argument in defence of the disputed equation. The professor tries hard to show no sign of being irritated by criticism from so lowly a source. Most of the questions from the floor will have the form of criticisms which, if valid, would diminish or destroy the professor's life's work. But bringing vigorous and diverse criticism to bear on accepted truths is one of the very purposes of the seminar. Everyone takes it for granted that the truth is not obvious, and that the obvious need not be true; that ideas are to be accepted or rejected according to their content and not their origin; that the greatest minds can easily make mistakes; and that the most trivial-seeming objection may be the key to a great new discovery. — David Deutsch

Why do you do that?" Torrin's voice echoes in the empty hall. His hand is holding my arm gently, not at all like Derek does. I can't have this. I can't. I shouldn't have ever come here with him.
I draw in a shaky breath and pull my arm away.
"Do what?"
"Walk away every time I ask you something personal?"
I stare hard at him. "Why do you do that?
He blinks. "Huh?"
"Ask so many questions."
His mouth drops open and closes and five long seconds pass before he says, "It's what people do, Quinn. When they're getting to know each other."
I shake my head and spin toward the door.
"You don't want to get to know me. — Brooklyn Skye

Reasons... questions... what they have in common?

- All get finded in the hard way. — Deyth Banger

I'm asking about the kid," Root said. "What does she get out of it?"
"My fist in her ear if she asks as many questions as you do," Pennant said. "You worry too much. Well, what do you say, Sultan? — Walter Kaylin

In life hard times will befall you that will create doubt in yourself, and life will ask questions of the authenticity of the person you are. Carrying the lotus means being true to yourself and in the realization that you were always meant to grow above this mud. We are meant to grow, progress, and evolve in this relentless environment of the World and through it all achieve happiness with grace in letting go. Carry the Lotus within; grow and rise above from the harsh and remorseless world beneath you. — Forrest Curran

This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams' account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them. — Alexander Nehamas

You know, the truth isn't hard to find, if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Truth waits just under the surface for any man brave enough to scrape a little dirt away. But most people are too afraid or too lazy to get dirty. They're afraid to ask the right questions. The hard questions. — Greg Iles

I'm constantly thinking about the role, and there's an infinite amount of questions you can ask yourself about a character to the point that it's hard to find the boundaries of when to not work. — Adam Driver

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled. — Mary Midgley

One of the hallmarks of great teachers is that they rejoice when their students surpass them. Encouraging an atmosphere of questioning and inviting people to grow within your classroom isn't necessarily easy; which must explain why people who want to create cults or die hard followers discourage questioning in general. They would rather have people reciting their dogma than asking hard questions. — Gudjon Bergmann

You shouldn't ask questions like that, sweetheart. You'll never get the truth out of a man with a hard-on. — Victoria Vane

He shrugged. "Yeah, but me dad said th' only way to learn is t' ask questions. An' it's hard to do that with buttoned-up lips. Anyway, I c'n tell that one you're followin' is a bad bloke. He has those eyes. He always give me the evil look when he comes up that hill, kinda like you did this mornin', but I could tell you was jus' scared. Not mean."
"I was not scared," I said.
"'Course you were," he replied matter-of-factly. "You're new here and followin' some bad guy. But you got a good guide now, so you'll get your story and then your boss'll be happy, right?"
It seemed pointless to argue with an eight-year-old kid, especially when he was essentially correct, so I just buttoned my lip and followed. — Rysa Walker

Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question. — Flann O'Brien

We have misunderstood our confusion when we think there is an answer to it. The confusion is not a result of questions that are too hard, but rather a questioner who is disintegrating. Confusion is the introduction to true intelligence. — Steven Harrison

: we live blindly. We repeat the same mistakes by rote until an emotional punch to the gut brings us up short ... Sometimes it requires intense pain before we can take a good hard look at ourselves, before we ask the important questions ... Who am I? What is important? What do I believe? What do I want? — Joan Medlicott

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. — Eddie Marsan

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything ... to know what's going on so I can feel like I'm in control. — Joyce Meyer

Do I have to do everything myself?" The cry was a soul-freezing mixture of rage and torment. "Ain't there no one to stop asking questions and just do my bidding? By God, I'll kill and kill and kill and kill and never stop killing if people don't do what I say. I'll beat you dummies till the blood runs out of your eyes. I'll tie every man on this godforsaken island to a tree and he'll bark like a dog for me to throw him a bone. — Walter Kaylin

People are starting to recognize me, and it can be hard because I'm a really nice person, and people will ask me uncomfortable questions like they know me, and I'm just like, 'Umm ... can I walk away now?' — Jessie Pavelka

Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical? — Josef Albers

Study hard. Understand not only the questions, but the questioner. Know how best to articulate the answers, but do it with humility, because ultimately the answer is in a person, the person of Christ, not in an argument. So, do your work and know how to present the answer, but do it with gentleness and meekness. — Ravi Zacharias

How came she by her death? How came she there? Was she slain by accident, or had she met with violence? were the questions that pressed upon our thoughts. But we said little then and after a time left her where we found her. It mattered not to her that the bed was hard or the air cold.
("A Night In An Old Castle") — George Payne Rainsford James

One last thing," he said. "Stop looking for me."
"I'm not looking for you." I scoffed.
He touched his index finger to my forehead, my skin absurdly warming under his touch. It didn't escape me that he couldn't seem to stop finding reasons to touch me. Nor did I miss that I didn't want him to stop. "Under all the layers, a part of you remembers. It's the part that came looking for me tonight. It's that part that's going to get you killed, if you're not careful."
We stood face-to-face, both of us breathing hard. The sirens were so close now.
"What am I supposed to tell the police?" I said.
"You're not going to talk to the police."
"Oh, really? Funny, because I plan on telling them exactly how you rammed that tire iron into Gabe's back. Unless you answer my questions."
He gave an ironic snort. "Blackmail? You've changed, Angel. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Love is the answer
At least for most of the questions in my heart
Why are we here and where do we go
And how come it's so hard — Jack Johnson

In Polmont, everyone was acting the hard man and giving it the large. I had to fight or cosh or do something to be accepted. I can tell you, it was better to be in a gang than being on your own, and I'd do anything in Polmont, no questions asked! — Stephen Richards

She glared at him. "Why are you forever asking hard questions?"
He smiled. "Sooner or later you'll have to be able to answer one."
Daja shoved him, grinning. — Tamora Pierce

That first week, I also went to Washington. That was really tough. I sympathize with those Washington figures who have to face 40 Times Washington bureau reporters. They ask hard questions and they're relentless. And they were quite suspicious and quite dubious about me. — Daniel Okrent

On the very last day of shooting [of The Last King of Scotlang], I remember wanting to get the [Idi Amin] character out of me right away, as much as I could. You literally take a bath to wash him off you. Luckily, I went into another part not so long afterwards, so I was kind of able to push it away a little bit. But speech patterns, and little sounds, particularly colloquial things, like the way you ask questions or might respond, were sticking with me, probably because I'd worked so hard to make it a part of my everyday way of expressing myself. — Forest Whitaker

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it. — Rick Wright

Practice self-nurturing, not only to get you through hard times but to guide you into a loving relationship with yourself. When you follow through with a simple act like comforting yourself with homemade soup, bringing home a fragrant flower for your night table, or taking a sweet solitary walk in a beautiful place, then you get an experience of being kind to yourself that can answer all those questions about "what do they mean, love myself?" This question is more easily answered by doing than by thinking. — Dossie Easton

We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions. — Danny Glover

Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress. — Alan Hirsch

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. — Timothy Keller

I worked very hard as a young journalist learning the trade and asking questions, understanding what a story is and being able to present that in a way that people would find interesting. — Jill Douglas

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit? — Aberjhani

As I started getting older and started to learn about the world, my friends would tell me about video games and dirt bikes and stuff, and I'd be like, "Oh, I got none of that." I started asking questions, like, "Why we can't get this stuff?" And it was like, "Well, we work hard to make sure da da da ... " — Fetty Wap

The child would ask him questions about the world that for him was not even a memory. He thought hard how to answer. There is no past. — Cormac McCarthy

I think everyone has their own style in journalism. Look, I'm a girl from the South! Sometimes I laugh. Someone can pejoratively call it giggling. But if you look at the body of my work, I ask lots of hard questions and break a lot of hard news. — Sarah Lacy

He remembers the philosophers dead with detail, and how they honed their trade into the grave for the sake of their livelihoods. Incapable of audacity, they pleasured themselves with a maze constructed of nothing but dead-ends. They were so petrified they might happen upon the truth, might come to know something for certain, that they deployed some of their best minds to obliterate it, scattering its shards into infinity. But they were only trying to keep the dream alive, after all, fighting to keep the questions outnumbering the answers, picking away at the odd dropped stitch in an otherwise ever-tightening blanket of sacrosanct precision. They fought hard, if unwittingly, against the encroaching dullness of complete knowledge, but ultimately paid the price of becoming as dull as their enemy - at least the chemical truths of literature sometimes bothered to wear a suit and tie. — Gary J. Shipley

The consequences for human welfare involved in questions about human capital spillovers are simply staggering. Once one starts to think about them, it's hard to think of anything else — Robert Lucas Jr.

Remember, an easy question can have an easy answer. But a hard question must have a hard answer. And for the hardest questions of all, there may be no answer - except faith. — Charles Sheffield

These questions are punctuated by other questions, as diverse as "Will I ever do time?" and "Did this girl have a trusting heart?" The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible times. Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them, and still I can't tell if I'm cooking any of this correctly, because I'm crying too hard and I have never really cooked anything before. — Bret Easton Ellis

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be. — James Comey

Of course, the books you read early, before 20, and love passionately, they get to you. Even if later on you can't read them again. You were shaped by certain books. All of us that read a lot, we're partly book-manufactured. It's really hard to talk about the influence of such books on you because it goes so deep. It's like, what was your father's influence on you, what was your mother's influence. How can you say? You grew up with it. So, you will find I dodge all questions about favorite books and so on. What does it matter what I like? — Ursula K. Le Guin

What will become of young adults who look accomplished on paper but seem to have a hard time making their way in the world without the constant involvement of their parents? How will the real world feel to a young person who has grown used to problems being solved for them and accustomed to praise at every turn? Is it too late for them to develop a hunger to be in charge of their own lives? Will they at some point stop referring to themselves as kids and dare to claim the "adult" label for themselves? If not, then what will become of a society populated by such "adults"? These were the questions that began to gnaw at — Julie Lythcott-Haims

The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.
A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Student-people are different from other people. They spend their entire life asking questions, and as soon as they have found out the answers, they start all over again with new, harder questions... when a student-person finds a good answer to a hard question, the other student-people will gasp, hug each other, and then throw a party. Those parties never last long, for student-people are in a hurry to go back to work and find new answers. — Roberto Trotta