Quotes & Sayings About Making It On My Own

When I started making my own music, I was more about recreating what I was hearing. I noticed that I had some control over what I was saying, and the effects that it's going to have on people. I wanted to focus more on the positive side of things, which are more in tune with my morals and ethics. — Lupe Fiasco

Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling - he shed it over me now. "Pass, Janet," said he, making room for me to cross the stile: "go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold." All — Charlotte Bronte

I pretty much just focus on making the records - unless I'm self-releasing them; then I do my own thing. But at some point, you have to stop worrying about chains of distribution, or it takes out of your time to write. — John Darnielle

It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself. — Jenny Slate

Actors always want to know how I come up with interesting and creative takes on characters, characters that aren't like me as I appear in daily life and that aren't like each other. It's simple: I let the lines and images connect with my imagination. I don't worry about consistency; I let myself respond moment by moment, piecemeal, to the character's dialogue and actions. Then I let my responses take me wherever they go, making mistakes and discarding them until choices start repeating themselves on their own no matter how arbitrary they seem at first. Then I know I'm on to something. But I don't try to put the character together. I leave it in pieces. The script and story put the character together so my moment by moment performance seems like a creative take on the whole character. — Harold Guskin

I crossed a line by making his family's personal business my own. But isn't that what friendship is? Isn't that what love is? It's more than caring and laughing and inspiring. It's about taking hurt and anger off people's shoulders and helping to carry the weight. It's more important to love people on the worst days than their best. — Katie Kacvinsky

One of my brothers used to tell me all the time, "Listen, nobody is going to discover you in the living room." It's about being interactive in life and participating in your own life. Once you get a grasp on that, you understand. "OK, I can take a couple of knocks. They can hit me on the chin, and I can get up." That's what it's about. It's not about not getting knocked down but getting up. Making sure that you keep pursuing whatever that passion is. For me, that passion is entertainment. — Omar Benson Miller

I'm quite convinced in my own mind that those who were arguing that [the need to intervene in Iraq] was a more immediate one than some believed - were I'm sure convinced that they were right on fact, I don't think they were making it up. So as to lying, I don't think it has been established that any lies were told. — Christopher Hitchens

I think my deepest criticism of the educational system ... is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not. — Carl Rogers

I begin to want things I've never wanted before: braids, a dressing-gown, a purse of my own. Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of it without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I've done these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly. Partly this is a relief. — Margaret Atwood

It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own. — Raymond Pettibon

My younger son, Cordell, aka Lil Snoop, loves me like a fan loves Snoop Dogg. He's inspired by making me happy. My older son, Corde, aka Spank, does everything I say, with effort and determination - but he does it for himself. He gets his thrill out of seeing his own results on the football field. — Snoop Dogg

The funny thing about making this record and being away from the girls and on my own in LA is that it allowed me to reflect on how much we've accomplished. — Melanie Chisholm

Once I started reinventing for myself what being an artist was - not going into a studio, but making things on my own terms in response to being out in the world - I started to really enjoy it ... I realized that everything else for me was hell. — Cornelia Parker

I squeeze his hand to let him know that I get it, that I share his pain. That's the moment when I think I finally understand what my science teachers tried to explain when they talked about thermal energy. My atoms are in motion making a path from my fingertips where I connect with him, spreading to my whole body and getting me hotter by the second. All my molecules seem to be moving and vibrating on their own accord, faster and faster and making my hand feels tingly. Whenever I'm around him I always have this warmth that surrounds me. When I get all flustered because he is making me all hot and bothered without even meaning to, the heat starts to resemble a fever. Now, it's like a volcano erupted all over me. It's passion and love and suffering all smashed together and linked between our hands. A little ball of emotions that keeps expanding. — Tammy Faith

Your generation is so cynical. You should try to help every individual person you meet, Ari, as a reflex, without thinking." Ari put his head on the steering wheel. "Here we find a fundamental weakness of the Christ doctrine," the Minister declared, making that wise and relatable face that had always been such a success in his television lectures. "It troubles itself too much with conscience, rationale, and so on. Now, I myself am a student of human nature. I observe all faiths, and draw my own conclusions. For example, a Christian sees a tramp in the street, he begins agonizing. Should I give him the money in my pocket? What if he uses it for drink? What if he wastes it? What if there's someone else who needs it more? What if I need it more? And so on. The Jews, the Muslims - they see a tramp, they give him money, they walk on. The action is its own justification. — Zadie Smith

It was Friday, July 24, 1992, when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn't have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

We may live in concrete nests piled on top of each other, we may file in and out of our planes and freeways in neat lines, but we are making it all up as we go along. An ant is born into a complex chemical environment where every small instruction had been laid down in advance. Mother tells the workers what to do and they do everything for the greater good of their enormous family.
In contrast, every human being is capable of working for the advancement of their own procreating, their own minuscule families. Yet we somehow recognize the value of a larger form of society, and readily respond to a larger world beyond our own narrow self-interests. With our unique creative capacity, we have modified ourselves as we have modified our physical conditions, and we have developed an extraordinary division of labor. You and I may be as different as night and day, but that is our strength, and it is precisely this diversification that makes my time in Africa so intensely satisfying. — Craig Packer

She stampeed. "I am making him run late."
She gave a resolution of exact 60 seconds to herself to see if she can find her diamond necklace or else she would attend the party with out it.

She suddenly turned, as if her memory shouted out loud- Its on the chest right there!
To her bewilderment, he was standing just a few inches away holding a big mirror in hand.

That perplexed her. Not Adam. Not even the fact that her neck was already hosting the necklace.
But seeing herself that way, her very own self. As if, she was unapprehended she existed.

Adam was expecting a smile on her face, and that she would touch the necklace and say- "Oh my foolish self" but she touched her face and said- "Oh my self..."

That was foolish! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

When I was a child and told my mother I didn't felt this was my planet, she thought I was schizophrenic or autistic. When later I finished a college degree and started working in different countries, she called me monster and started threatening me. Nearly 40 years later, when I was making a living from the books I wrote based on what I know, and making 6 times more money than she ever will, she apologized. I'm just not sure why or what she was apologizing for. I had already forgiven her ignorance when realizing nobody would ever believe the truth but myself. I had to go the whole way alone. Nobody was going to come with me on this very long, painful and challenging journey that humans call life but for me was much more than that, it was my mission, of changing their whole future far beyond the time when I'm gone. She was never my mother but merely the human body that gave me birth. In that sense, I am a monster, because I had no love. I had to find that too, on my own. — Robin Sacredfire

Resting beside her, he seemed to Ildiko a living statue, carved from dark granite into a form of supple elegance and power. He was beautiful, and the tremor change in her perception of him robbed her lungs of air.
He opened both eyes suddenly, making her jump. Two shimmering gold coins stared at her unblinking. "Good evening, wife," he said in a voice raspy with the remnants of sleep. A closed-lip smile curved his mouth upward and deepened the tiny lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes. "You're staring. Do I have a fly on my nose?"
Fighting down a blush at being caught gawking at her own husband, Ildiko lightly tapped the tip of his nose with one finger. "I was trying to find a way to kill it without punching you in the face. Lucky for you, it flew away. — Grace Draven

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHECKLIST If we want our kids to have a shot at making it in the world as eighteen-year-olds, without the umbilical cord of the cell phone being their go-to solution in all manner of things, they're going to need a set of basic life skills. Based upon my observations as dean, and the advice of parents and educators around the country, here are some examples of practical things they'll need to know how to do before they go to college - and here are the crutches that are currently hindering them from standing up on their own two feet: 1. An eighteen-year-old must be able to talk to strangers - faculty, deans, advisers, landlords, store clerks, human resource managers, coworkers, bank tellers, health care providers, bus drivers, mechanics - in the real world. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I have no regrets. I find everything happens for a reason and the reason why maybe this is happening is I won't take BS from anyone. And I think it's making me stand out on my own and be very independent and fight for what I believe in. — Britney Spears

In fact, I am a pessimist. But when I'm making a film, I don't want to transfer my pessimism onto children. I keep it at bay. I don't believe that adults should impose their vision of the world on children, children are very much capable of forming their own visions. There's no need to force our own visions onto them. — Hayao Miyazaki

I knew Kristy was probably exacting
the revenge she thought I
was due, while Delia moved right behind her, making apologies and smoothing
rough edges. Monica was
most likely following her own path, either oblivious or deeply emotionally
invested, depending on what
you believed, while Wes worked the perimeter, always keeping an eye on
everything. There was a whole
other world out there, the Talbots' world, where I didn't belong now, if I ever
had. But it was okay not to
fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere. So I picked up my tray, careful
to keep it level, and
pushed through the door to join my friends. — Sarah Dessen

I care about politics, but I have a tough time making comedy out of it. I was so happy to have a chance to be on The Daily Show, and I think Jon Stewart's so funny ... but mostly in my own comedy, I care about less relevant things. — Demetri Martin

I would have been content to just do studio work, making it on my own never really entered my mind. — Glen Campbell

Maybe it's my own fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn't. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner. That my game was built on flash, and not fire. Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe you're just making excuses. — Michael Jordan

Someone: You were pretty good at that thing, why'd you stop doing it?

Me internally: I get extremely anxious when I think about doing something I might possibly succeed at because I base my self-worth on my achievements and other people's approval. I am afraid because I know I will never be able to live up to my own unrealistic expectations. I hate making mistakes because they make me feel worthless. I take negative feedback too personally. I feel immense guilt over not doing things that I've been avoiding, which makes me avoid them more. I feel ashamed and inadequate due to how difficult it is for me to stay committed to anything. I'm worried that I'll just end up disappointing myself and the entire world and I am convinced that if I failed I would literally die.

Me externally: idk I guess I've just been kinda busy lol — Unknown

My kind do not spend their days at craft or art. Our deepest desire is not for the making of a thing, nor for the thing itself. Rather, we thrive on the skills of those who make. We steal that time and that power, and we turn it to our own souls, and that is how we grow. — E.K. Johnston

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging. — Robyn

I've tried to move on with my life and my career for the last two years and do my own thing, and 'American Idol' and FOX, they've just been making it really tough for me to do that. — Corey Clark

I love making up stories. I love getting lost in other worlds and being with other characters. I love the way I think I'm in control and then the characters and stories take on a life of their own.
I love how I can incorporate my own faith into the stories I write.
Writing is both discovery and creating and with each book I do that. Discover and create. It can be an adventure some days, a nightmare others. I also like that I can do this wearing ugly clothes. — Carolyne Aarsen

But I hope that in the lives of Ender Wiggin, Novinha, Miro, Ela, Human, Jane, the hive queen, and so many others in this book, you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than bestseller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in. — Orson Scott Card

Raven could destroy me. He could twist any one of the missteps I had made around him until he owned me. That he hadn't yet didn't mean he wouldn't ever. It just meant I was of more use to him running on my own steam, making fresh mistakes to compound the old ones than under his auspices. — Hailey Edwards

What the hell was that out there?" he fumed at me, but was still definitely turned on, his hard-on digging into me, making my own body go to war with my head."None of your business, that's what it was.""Are you fucking him?""None of your business!"He made a low, irate sound under his breath and tugged on my arms. "Considering I want to fuck you, it is my business. And considering you definitely want to be fucked by me, I think it's in your best interest to answer me."
- On Dublin Street — Samantha Young

I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone - better jobs, health care, and so forth - there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met - in my utopia, anyway - life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking. — Barbara Ehrenreich

However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords ... I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams.
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together ... and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood. — Cressida Cowell

It's very rare that you get to play a character over the course of so many films. Bella meant a lot to me and she will always be such a formative event in my career. I grew up with her and she and I have been on this great journey together. I also see many parallels between her evolution and my own because I lived through so many things along the way while playing Bella and having this connection to so many people involved in making the films over the years. It would be impossible for me to separate my world from Bella's. — Kristen Stewart

Being on my own in a studio is really, really different than making music with the band. I can't say I necessarily enjoy it more, but it was just a new experience for me. — Hayley Williams

On my own or with a friend, I'm a shopaholic, and I particularly love the cleaning aisle in the supermarket. But when I'm with my husband, I'm shop shy because he can't bear it. It always ends up with us making a huge scene on the High Street and then going off in a huff in separate directions. — Emilia Fox

After 12 intense years of rock music, I was happy to get away from making a record and going out on a tour. When I did it, I wanted to feel inspired. After a while I finally had my fill working on other people's music, and I started coming up with music on my own and said, 'This could be for me.' — James Iha

Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider. — Rosamunde Pilcher

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural loving and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? — Herman Melville

Trying to tell an authentic, raw and honest story without making it therapy. Separating myself enough to have perspective while putting myself in the emotional hot seat so that I could make this thing real. Asking for help. Delegating responsibility. Standing up for myself. Fighting the impulse to be sweet and likeable 24/7. Being open to all ideas, but staying true to the spine of the story. Knowing when to let go and when to hold on and fight like hell. Getting out of my own way. Shall I go on? — Jessie Kahnweiler

I often find that when I fall into the trap of speaking too harshly, it is because I don't have enough confidence in the power of my own voice to carry sufficient strength on its own. When you realize that your speech can be powerful, you don't need to amplify that power by making personal attacks that overgeneralize the specific feedback you are trying to give. — Ethan Nichtern

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. — Ann Patchett

I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time, we push forward. It's all we can do. On our own two feet. — Natsuki Takaya

What are you burning?" On a glance, just some papers.
"I write in a journal." He spoke below his breath, so that his words weren't quite for me. "Because I like to see everything written down. So that I know it really happened. That I wasn't just making it up. Then I read it and memorize it. And then I have to destroy the hard evidence."
I thought of my own journal, the muddle of every page. All those unfiltered, lunatic letters to Sean Ryan.
"What is it, exactly, that you need to destroy?"
"Everything that I don't want to be true. — Adele Griffin

To the average eye, my bedroom was a complete disaster. The floor was hardly visible with all of the empty soda bottles, chip bags, and piles of clothes covering it. The rustic nightstand by my bed was so cluttered with papers, more soda bottles, notebooks, and hoodies that it looked like a pile of contemporary art. And my bed? It was just a pile of dark blue blankets and pillows scattered on an old mattress. What's the point in making your bed, anyway? You're just gonna mess it up and unmake it at the end of the day. Why even bother? My bedroom might look like a mess to anyone else, but to me, it was my own personal oasis. I liked it just the way it was. I never bought the whole saying, "A cluttered room is a cluttered mind." Me? Cluttered? Nah. More like creative. The more cluttered your room is, the more creative you are. And judging by my room, I must be pretty creative. I — Savannah Ostler

At one point, Joylene (a large woman from HR with four framed photos of her cats and one of her deceased father holding a trout on her desk) actually stated, "Ooo, I love Excel." Who says, "Ooo, I love Excel."? How is it even a sentence? Each time Joylene had a question, she waved her pen, with a huge rainbow colored feather taped to the end, above her head while making excited "uh, uh, um, uh" noises. "Yes, Joylene?" "If I want my columns color coded, am I able to mix my own preferred range of blues from a palette or do I have to select from the four-thousand shades of blue it already has?" "And that, your Honor, is when the defendant leapt across the desk. I enter into evidence the rainbow feather pen." If there ever comes a time where I'm typing numbers into boxes and decide I'd really like those boxes with numbers to be a specific shade of blue, it will be time to turn off the computer, pack my things, and start a fire. — David Thorne

There's all these people involved, and it becomes this huge machine - it stops being just me making my own little songs for myself, or for the world. And it's hard to stop the machine. If you want to take time to write a record, they're like, "OK, tour through March, April, and June, then you can take a few weeks off to record in July before getting back on the road for the European festival circuit." After a while, I had to put my foot down. — Zachary Cole Smith

And there is my payment the rubies in your cheeks. Are you properly scandalized by your wicked behavior? If you were Catholic, you'd singe the ears of the priest you confessed to. Do you remember making me swear to repeat all those naughty actions agian, no matter what you said this morning?"
Now that he brought it up, I did recall saying that. Great Betrayed by my own immorality.
"God, Bones ... some of that was depraved."
"I'll take that as a compliment." He closed the distance between us."I love you. Don't be ashamed of anything we did, even if your prudery is on life support. — Jeaniene Frost

The people making you feel guilty for going your own way and choosing your own life are simply saying, 'Look at me. I'm better than you because my chains are bigger.' It takes courage to break those chains and define your own life." So dare to live your precious days on Earth to their fullest, true to yourself, with open heart and thoughtful mind, and with the courage to change what doesn't work and accept the consequences. You may find that you can fly farther than you ever imagined. — Vishen Lakhiani

And then everything went on very quietly for a fortnight, says Dr. Jordan. He is reading aloud from my confession.
Yes Sir, it did, I say. More or less quietly.
What is everything? How did it go on?
I beg your pardon, Sir?
What did you do everyday?
Oh, the usual, Sir, I say. I performed my duties.
You will forgive me, says Dr. Jordan. Of what did those duties consist?
I look at him. He is wearing a yellow cravat with small white squares, he is not making a joke. He really does not know. Men such as him do not have to clean up the messes they make, but we have to clean up our own messes, and theirs into the bargain. In that way they are like children, they do not have to think ahead, or worry about the consequences of what they do. But it's not their fault, it is only how they are brought up. — Margaret Atwood

Making love was a game of echoes. We had shared memories so many times that when I made love to her, I knew exactly how it felt to be Purslane. I could taste and feel her other lovers and she could taste and feel mine, each experience reaching away like a reflection in a hall of mirrors, diminishing into a kind of carnal background radiation, a sea of sensuous experience. I had been a girl once, then a thousand men and women and all their lovers. The stasis field locked on. The Synchromesh took hold. I hurtled into my own future, while my ship ate space and time.

- "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds — Alastair Reynolds

Like most, I was a solitary boy at first, keeping to my books and weeping in the hedgerows whenever I could get away on my own. Surely, I thought, I must be the saddest child in the world; that there must be something innately horrid about me to cause my father to cast me off so heartlessly. I believed that if I could discover what it was, there might be a chance of putting things right, of somehow making it up to him. — Alan Bradley

The day will one day come--or what of the long-promised kingdom of heaven?--when a woman, instead of spending anxious thought on the adornment of her own outward person, will seek with might the adornment of the inward soul of another, and will make that her crown of rejoicing. Nay, are there none such even now? The day will come when a man, rather than build a great house for the overflow of a mighty hospitality, will give himself, in the personal labor of outgoing love, to build spiritual houses like St. Paul--a higher art than any of man's invention. O my brother, what were it not for thee to have a hand in making thy brother beautiful! — George MacDonald

If you could start children right from the beginning with this thought, you'd see the effect it has on their lives. In fact, I did this with my own children. Again and again, I told them there was a reason why they were here, and they had to find out what that reason was for themselves. From the age of four years, they heard this. I also taught them to meditate when they were about the same age, and I told them, "I never, ever want you to worry about making a living. If you're unable to make a living when you grow up, I'll provide for you, so don't worry about that. I don't want you to focus on doing well in school. I don't want you to focus on getting the best grades or going to the best colleges. What I really want you to focus on is asking yourself how you can serve humanity, and asking yourself what your unique talents are. Because you have a unique talent that no one else has, and you have a special way of expressing that talent, and no one else has it. — Deepak Chopra

It is to this new-found resolution to reassert our indivisibility with life, to recognize the obligations incumbent upon us as the most powerful and deadly species ever to exist, and to begin making amends for the havoc we have wrought, that my own hopes for a revival and continuance of life on earth now turn. If we persevere in this new way we may succeed in making man humane ... at last. — Farley Mowat

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant
has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation? — Antonio Gramsci

I like to discover little treasures in the cities we are in like a really amazing restaurant. I will go on my own and enjoy figuring out the ingredients as if I were making it at home, then I share my finds on my socials. I find that these little adventures bring me peace, because it is something I do when I am home. — Noelle Scaggs

The dancing and the faggotry of the Bon Soir is 'kiss my ass if you don't like it. I've got nothing to hide or lose' style. Much like what you see uptown and with a strong Spanerican flavor. This can be a make-out bar, but in truth this place belongs to the people who are already making it. This is where they come to have a good time, to 'go out.' It's yeastier. It's lower-class. It's a fun bar. It's the kind of place where on the slow ones you can belly-rub and grind your interforked aching bodies together and know that since it's your own thing, you can damn well do it without interference or apology. — Angelo D'Arcangelo

I was sort of like a kid in a candy store, realizing it was fun making beats without the perceived burden that every track I did had to be a some progressive sample masterpiece. It was nice to blow off steam and work on those songs. For me, that's what 'The Outsider' was about in general: forget everything, I'm just gonna follow my own music, and make the music I want to make. — DJ Shadow

1 unread message. Rustom tapped it open, a little unsure, and a whole lot afraid.
Know your future, call 45678. World Famous Astrologer.
Fuck you. From now on, I am making my own destiny. — Gaurav Parab

I've been in the studio experimenting on making a CD of my own. I'm trying out different producers, styles, sounds. With music, as opposed to acting, you are not playing a character. You are showing people who you are. I really want to have my spirit in it. — Emmy Rossum

I began thinking about why am I constructing almost a shadow father or ghost father in my head into Graham Greene in response to the father who created me? What's going on here? I think a part of my sense is it's every boy's story. When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with. — Pico Iyer

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it's like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I'm not fighting. I don't have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody. — Jackie Chan

I didn't think while I drew. The pencil flew across the page making marks, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Often times I didn't know what it was going to be until it was completed. The cemetery was still with only a few birds calling off in the distance from time to time. When I finished I was not at all surprised by what had taken form on my paper. It was a portrait of my dad. He was sitting behind the tombstone, using it as a desk, his laptop open in front of him. He wore a peaceful smile. I smiled, too, as another tear fell. — Marysue G. Hobika

You're supposed to put your coin in the slot and let it go. It spins round and round the big yellow funnel for like a minute, making a rhythmic whirring sound that gets tighter and tighter, more intense, more desperate as it spirals closer to the hole. It keeps spinning faster - all that kinetic energy forced down the neck of the funnel until it's blaring like an alarm - then it falls silent as it drops into the black abyss of the funnel. I'm that coin on its way down, screaming in the neck of the funnel, with nothing but my own kinetic energy and centrifugal force keeping me from dropping into darkness. — Neal Shusterman

I had the mistaken idea, based on what happened in World War I, that we would stay out of the war, and it is very unfortunate that I felt like that. If I had been more convinced, as Wigner and Szilard were, that we were going to get into the war, I would have pushed harder to begin making the bomb. I figured out that roughly half a million to a million people were being killed a month in the later stages of the war. Every month by which we could have shortened the war would have made a difference of a half million to a million lives, including the life of my own brother. — Gregory Benford

I listen a lot to my own music when I'm in the process of making it. In the car, in the kitchen while making food, on my iPod when I go shopping, etc. I listen to it as much as possible, and if I get tired of listening to it, it's not good enough, and I leave it unreleased. — Hans-Peter Lindstrom

I dug my hand into the small spot and pulled out a key attached to a big black key chain with buttons for locking and unlocking doors. My head jerked up to see his serious expression. Patti covered her mouth, saying nothing.
"No more boys taking you on trips, you hear?" His voice was gravelly. "You can take your own self from now on. Last thing you need is some boy distracting you and making this whole situation even more complicated. Promise me you'll stay away from that son of Pharzuph."
[ ... ]
"I tried that once, John," Patti warned him. "It didn't work out so well for me. — Wendy Higgins

We'd spent years as adversaries, two predators sharing territory and a certain, unwelcome attraction. Somehow, during all those years I spent outwardly acquiescing to his demands while making sure I held my own, I'd won his respect. I'd had werewolves love me and hate me, but I'd never had one respect me before. Not even Samuel. Adam respected me enough to act on my suspicions. It meant a lot. — Patricia Briggs

The obvious liberal rejoinders come to mind: What about the child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head? And did my [fired white-collar workers] boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It seems inexcusably cruel to tell people who have reach some kind of personal nadir that their probem is entirely of their own making ... — Barbara Ehrenreich

Before, being a model, it was just a job, and I was making fun of it. But today, I take my career more seriously. The fact that a reader may buy an Armani item because she'd seen it on me in a magazine is very important to me. So much so that I intend to launch my own label. — Milla Jovovich

I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights. — Emma Watson

These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry. — Azar Nafisi

Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life. — Mark Wahlberg

It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community. — Samuel Alito

One of my favorite things on the show was just getting to do my own monologue and talking about someone who killed themselves, or making a joke about some horrible tragedy - I love being able to fight for and get on TV. I just think it's so different. — Anthony Jeselnik

What I love most about playing in front of people has something to do with a certain kind of energy exchange. The attention and appreciation of my audience feeds back into my playing. It really seems as if there is a true and equal give and take between performer and listener, making me aware of how much I depend on my audience. And since the audience is different every night, the music being played will differ too. Every space I performed in has its own magic and spirit. — Nils Frahm

I think trying to write is a religious exercise. You are trying to understand life, and you can only get the illusion of doing it fully by writing. That is, it's the only way I can come to understand things fully. When I create, when I put my own mark on something and form it, I begin to know the whole truth about it, how it was put together. Then you can begin to change things around. You know all this after you have written a lot. You really know. And it has become the most important thing in your life. It has nothing to do with craft, or even art, in a way. It is making sense of life. It is coming to understand yourself. — Peter Taylor

..when we live behind a wall, our inner darkness cannot be penetrated by the light that is in the world. In fact, all we can see "out there" is darkness, not realizing how much of it is of our own making! As a young man, the wall allowed me to cast my own darkness on others while remaining blissfully ignorant of how they saw me. — Parker J. Palmer

I ask myself what making it really means. I know I want to make my living solely as a musician, but I also want to be recognized as someone unique, defined by my voice, by my abilities as a songwriter, to have the world know my songs and my melodies just as they had known and acknowledged the songs of the Beatles. I want to do this on my own terms, I want to be singular, and if that means being marginalized, then so be it. I will become stronger, and even if no one else knows who I am, I shall know myself. — Sting

Now they were lawyers and investment bankers, with faces creased and drawn by the skirmish of daily life. Others I'd known well, and as we inched perilously closer to the casket, our talk evidenced a shared fondness for Rob but also something else shared in our own receding dreams. There was Ty and his dermatology career, me and my struggles to publish a second novel, former history majors who were doing their best to remain in school forever. Nobody, it seemed, was making the money he'd thought he would make, inhabiting the home he'd thought he would inhabit, doing the thing he'd thought he would do in life. Nobody was fulfilling the dreams harbored on graduation day almost ten years earlier. — Jeff Hobbs

I decided to walk alongside Beth and the annoying little ass. It seemed right that it wouldn't be her walking toward me or me waiting for her, but us traveling on the journey together. Because sometimes, that's how love is. It isn't a man chasing a woman, it isn't a man storming the castle, and it isn't the girl waiting for love to happen. It's two people making a commitment. It's two people realizing that they hold the keys to their own happiness in their own damn hands. The problem? Most people forget that they have the power to live the fairytale. I'd forgotten I had the power, and in the end, I'd been willing to walk away from my future. — Rachel Van Dyken

[At DuPont,] I was very fortunate that I worked under men who were very much interested in making discoveries and inventions. They were very much interested in what they were doing, and they left me alone. And I was able to experiment on my own, and I found this very stimulating. It appealed to the creative person in me. — Stephanie Kwolek

I see you have the advantage of me,' he said. 'Very well. I'll make it as brief as I can. I'll tell you the plain facts and I only hope you won't draw the wrong conclusions from them. George Rattery had been making advances to my wife for some time. She was amused, intrigued, gratified by it - any woman might be, you know; George was a handsome brute, in his way. She may even have carried on a harmless flirtation with him. I did not remonstrate with her: if one is afraid to trust one's own wife, one has no right to be married at all. That's my view, at any rate. — Nicholas Blake

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. — Dorothy L. Sayers

With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page. — Chuck Palahniuk

I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw going on around me, was quite enough proof that business as a mere money-making game was not worth giving much thought to and was distinctly no place for a man who wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem to me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have it demonstrated that it is the way. For the only foundation of real business is service. — Henry Ford

My colleagues and I have to constantly remind each other that we must keep our own view on the world while making films. With 'Chicken Run,' we learned how easy it is to be influenced by outside forces, but you mustn't lose the heart and soul of what you are doing. — Nick Park

It had been off-hand and flattering, in exactly the proper proportions, and Louise had cleverly erected a thin shield of something that was less than and better than love to protect him from the comic, unending abuse of the Army. And, now, it was probably over. Women, Michael thought resentfully, can never learn the art of being transients. They are all permanent settlers at heart, making homes with dull, instinctive persistence in floods and wars, on the edges of invasions, at the moment of the crumbling of states. No, he thought, I will not have it. For my own protection I am going to get through this time alone ... — Irwin Shaw

I know this sounds weird, but I was into storyboarding when I was younger. I loved coming up with my own style through fashion blogs and magazines. But I've never liked trying things on. I don't know why. It was more about making mood boards. I've loved fashion my whole life, but more the imagery of it than actually wearing it. — Gigi Hadid

I can certainly throw out some observation about the process of creating which may be of use. Firstly, it's the best & the worst of worlds, because the only fuel you have to make the fire blaze on the page / screen is the stuff of your own being. An artist consumes his or herself in the act of making art. I can feel that consumption even now, sitting here at my desk at the end of a working day. In order to generate the ideas that I have set on the page for the last 10 or 11 hours I have burned the fuel of my own history. This is, obviously a double-edged sword. In order to give, the artist must take from himself. That's the deal. And it's very important to me that the work I do is the best I can make it, because I know what is being burned up to create. As the villain of Sacrament says: living & dying, we feed the fire. — Clive Barker

I was blessed. I had a great childhood and great parents that loved music and family. I moved from England when I was almost 18 and been on my own ever since and have been trying to make a living in the music business for the past twelve years. A lot of people say I'm an overnight success, but it's an overnight success that's been twelve years in the making. — Bo Bice

My father was the youngest of six brothers, and he was the brains. I never thought he was making what he should have. He had to split it with five brothers. So I made up my mind: I was going to go on my own and make my own money. — Alan C. Greenberg

What I find really difficult is making career decisions. Normally it will take me two weeks, until the very last minute and I have to say yes or no. For a couple of weeks, I will tune everyone out who is giving me advice, so that I can make a clear decision on my own and it takes time. — Paul Walker

I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within. — Jimmy Connors