Martinus Nijhoff Quotes & Sayings

I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it. — Maurice Sendak

Bear it like a man, even if you feel it like an ass. — George Bernard Shaw

Some point you had to risk the ridicule of the mob, of your own internalized voices, and try to see clearly what had been set in front of you in this life, and try to act on that as bravely and honestly as you could, no matter what kind of rules you'd previously been living by. — Roland Merullo

I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back. — Woody Allen

[T]he more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer ... [taking] away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence of somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health for support in age and sickness. — Benjamin Franklin

I am definitely most proud of 'American Dreams.' — Tom Verica

I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense. — W. Somerset Maugham

Are you just going to stand there frying hamburgers while your child could be dying in a fire? — Yoko Ogawa

Well, if you've got a one-in-a-million girl don't let her get away; cause the next one-in-a-million girl is a million girls away ... — Liz Phair