Mcginley Quotes & Sayings

Happiness puts on as many shapes as discontent, and there is nothing odder than the satisfaction of one's neighbor. — Phyllis McGinley

The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls. — Phyllis McGinley

I love my wife, I love my kids. — Ted McGinley

I'm very proud of my faith. So, it's not so much (being embarrassed by it). It's just it is really personal. It's not one of those things I'm willing to compromise. I don't have to bounce it off other people. I'm not willing to take judgment on what I believe - and I would hate to not live up to it. That's just not fair. — Ted McGinley

I would consider it the greatest experience of my life, it's the experience that made me a man, that taught me so many life lessons that you get from sport, ones that I've been able to pass down. (It was) invaluable, beyond words, got me through school, high school, and college, it was the greatest gift I gave myself. — Ted McGinley

I have read that during the process of canonization the Catholic Church demands proof of joy in the candidate, and although I have not been able to track down chapter and verse I like the suggestion that dourness is not a sacred attribute. — Phyllis McGinley

The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone. — Phyllis McGinley

It's up to the captain. I certainly feel my golf is worthy of playing in the Ryder Cup. But I'm not sure I'm on the radar screen of Paul McGinley. — Bernhard Langer

Dr. Cox mentors the rookie doctors with a spoonful of dirt and then a cup of sugar. I see him as an archetypal descendent of two of my favorite curmudgeonly characters: Lou Grant and Louie De Palma. — John C. McGinley

There is satisfaction in seeing one's household prosper; in being both bountiful and provident. — Phyllis McGinley

With Shakespeare, if you're not going to do the iambic pentameter, do some other play. — John C. McGinley

Let others, worn with living / And living's aftermath, / Take Sleep to heal the heart's distress, / Take Love to be their comfortress, / Take Song or Food or Fancy Dress, / But I shall take a Bath. — Phyllis McGinley

Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet. — Phyllis McGinley

What in me is pure conviction is simple prejudice in you. — Phyllis McGinley

Ladies with curly hair / Have time to spare. — Phyllis McGinley

It is the leisured, I have noticed, who rebel the most at an interruption of routine. — Phyllis McGinley

I'm just really proud of 'Dead Head Fred.' — John C. McGinley

God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. — Phyllis McGinley

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause. — Phyllis McGinley

Everybody who plays top-level sport, whether it's golf or football, or whatever, needs to get into 'The Zone' ... For me personally, on the morning of a round, preparation is always about getting into the zone. The less I communicate with other people, the better. I'm trying to rehearse in my mind what I am working on in my game: going through my swing keys, going through my putting keys. When I get to the course I get the pin positions for the day and I'll analyze those. I'll make a strategy for the golf course and look how I'm going to play it — Paul McGinley

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here. — Phyllis McGinley

A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet. — Phyllis McGinley

Oh, high is the price of parenthood, and daughters may cost you double. You dare not forget, as you thought you could, that youth is a plague and a trouble. — Phyllis McGinley

Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away. — Phyllis McGinley

Sons do not need you. They are always out of your reach, Walking strange waters. — Phyllis McGinley

Men can't be trusted with pruning shears any more than they can be trusted with the grocery money in a delicatessen ... They are like boys with new pocket knives who will not stop whittling. — Phyllis McGinley

Wake up and fuck me," demanded Tarin.

"I thought your bum hurt?"

Tarin squirmed. "Want cock, too. Fall out a tree, climb it again. — Syd McGinley

As an actor, it's great to play a strong leader with a heart of gold. — John C. McGinley

I'm always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms. — Ryan McGinley

Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense. — Phyllis McGinley

Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy, Happy New Year everybody. — Phyllis McGinley

The TV and the public pay our wages and they like to see professional golfers mess it up. Missing a green with a chip shot - when do you see that? It's great to see exciting golf like we had last week. — Paul McGinley

I have no issue with being a character actor. If you've been around enough that people are able to segregate you into that category, it means you're working. So that's good! — John C. McGinley

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. — Phyllis McGinley

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful. — Phyllis McGinley

Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair. — Phyllis McGinley

Suffering is as necessary to entertaining as vermouth is to a Martini - a small but vital ingredient. — Phyllis McGinley

A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you. — Phyllis McGinley

I've always said that the word 'genius,' especially in Hollywood, is way overused. — Ted McGinley

I feel bad for people who (don't have) faith because they don't have that blanket of comfort ... If I'm going out on stage, I always say a prayer right before I go out. Whatever it is. Before I take off on a plane. There's just always this connection ... God knows. I know. That's all I need. — Ted McGinley

I like to be in waiting rooms with people as they're auditioning, because their terror calms me. — John C. McGinley

Turns out, Down syndrome is the most common genetic disorder, occurring once in every 800 births, and no one really knows why it happens. It just does. — John C. McGinley

My son, Max, was born the day Princess Di died. — John C. McGinley

What's so interesting about 'Point Break' to me is that it's a study of testosterone and adrenaline by a woman. That's why it's little more interesting than it should be. — John C. McGinley

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings. — Ryan McGinley

On 'Platoon' I was offered in 1984 a very tiny part that Ivan Kane would go on to play. Then the financing fell out, and the film was scuttled for two years. — John C. McGinley

You go to the hospital your wife's in labor and you're doing the thing, and then it's very disorienting and scary and you beat yourself up and you go through a whole period of 'woe is me' and then you realize that this a gift, this child is the light, and if you can nourish that light and just let it shine, you have an opportunity to get closer to what I think is God. — John C. McGinley

Hollywood's all about, 'Let's make this easy: This is what you do, so you go over here in this group, and we're not gonna call you.' — Ted McGinley

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom. Let them do what they are best at. While we scrawl interoffice memos and direct national or extranational affairs, men could spend all their time inventing wheels, peering at stars, composing poems, carving statues, exploring continents
discovering, reforming, or crying out in a sacramental wilderness. Efficiency would probably increase, and no one would have to worry so much about the Gaza Strip or an election. — Phyllis McGinley

Children are forced to live very rapidly in order to live at all. They are given only a few years in which to learn hundreds of thousands of things about life and the planet and themselves. — Phyllis McGinley

The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it's a three-camera setup. There's a master and then there's two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don't re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening. — John C. McGinley

I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange back when they used to write tickets. And I was just a runner. So a guy would write a ticket and I would run it, and it was endless. That was a hard job. And I dug tungsten ... for a coal company in Wyoming one summer, and that was pretty miserable. — John C. McGinley

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

You have to like the characters you play. — Ted McGinley

O, merry is the Optimist, With the troops of courage leaguing. But a dour trend In any friend Is somehow less fatiguing. — Phyllis McGinley

Words may sting, but silence is what breaks the heart. — Phyllis McGinley

I'm making the art for me first. I'm making it because these are the pictures I want to see. I'm making pictures that don't yet exist. — Ryan McGinley

Women are not men's equals in anything except responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races. — Phyllis McGinley

The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else. — John C. McGinley

Aunts are discreet, a little shy / By instinct. They forbear to pry ... — Phyllis McGinley

Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind. — Phyllis McGinley

All my work, really, is based on my brothers and sisters. I had so many adventures with them and a big part of the work is to recreate those. It's easy for me to be around a lot of people, because I can retreat. I can watch everything. — Ryan McGinley

I have absolutely no interest in creating depressing images. — Ryan McGinley

Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time! — Phyllis McGinley

It's hard / Keeping up with the avant-garde. — Phyllis McGinley

A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train. — Phyllis McGinley

Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones. — Phyllis McGinley

I built a baseball field in the lower part of our property and I'm always working on that. I got a wheelbarrow, a pick and a shovel, and I started to build a baseball field during writers' strike. We have boys and girls come over and we have clinics in the spring. It's called The Strike because it's named for the writers' strike. — John C. McGinley

The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet. — Phyllis McGinley

I'm a homebody. If I'm not working I'm with my family being a dad. — John C. McGinley

The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven. — Phyllis McGinley

Die in winter woods," roared Tarin, as if it were his most
fervent wish. He was losing it again. Since being caught, he
had seen a boy with no balls or toes, a finger had been in his
ass twice, he'd been cooked, made to wear clothes, walked on
winter-lake stuff, wasted his gift, was going to have his tooth
pulled out and - scat - and he was being laughed at. — Syd McGinley

Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable. — Phyllis McGinley

(K)ids are savages who haven't learned to lie to themselves yet, and they don't flinch from the truth. — Brendan McGinley

It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image. — Ryan McGinley

I wanted to be Red Barber, Mel Allen or Howard Cosell. I loved their personalities and all of their sounds. — John C. McGinley

Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion. — Phyllis McGinley

I've always thought Ed Burns was a profoundly underrated actor. He's a great director, obviously. A great director/writer. But I think he's a stunning actor, too. — John C. McGinley

The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer. — Phyllis McGinley

I see you in my mind crisp and concise and I will stop at nothing to make the vision reality. — Robert McGinley

I would love to have a photographic memory. It would come in handy with the rants I'm given on Scrubs ... often on short notice! — John C. McGinley

Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime. — Jeffrey Kluger

Ah! some love Paris, / And some Purdue. / But love is an archer with a low I.Q. / A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. / So I'm in love with / New York City. — Phyllis McGinley

The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock - full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat - like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle I took such months to get. — Phyllis McGinley

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents. — Phyllis McGinley

Groups like the NAACP, The Anti-Defamation League, NOW and GLAAD, will respond to derisive language directed at their constituents. The price paid by those who cavalierly chose to verbally disrespect the dignity of African Americans, Jews, women and homosexuals is steep. — John C. McGinley

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick. — Phyllis McGinley

A lot of things went incredibly well for 'Scrubs': from a ridiculous number of downloads on the iPods, to whenever they issue a new season on DVD it kinda sells out, and we got nominated for an Emmy. To be picked up for six years is all gravy, man. — John C. McGinley

I am a father. My son's name is Max and my daughter's name is Billie Grace. Twelve years ago Max was born with Down Syndrome. His journey has been complicated by infantile seizures, sleep apnea, dietary challenges and now, puberty! — John C. McGinley

Freedom of speech is, to all Americans, as oxygen is to the human condition. It is a right that has been irreversibly programmed into our hard drive. We are free to speak our minds. An artist's right to express him or herself as best suits their art, is the artist's prerogative and it is guaranteed. — John C. McGinley

Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place. — Phyllis McGinley

Say what you will, making a marriage work is a woman's business. — Phyllis McGinley

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession. — Phyllis McGinley

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man. — Phyllis McGinley

The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation. — Phyllis McGinley

The saints differ from us in their exuberance, the excess of our human talents. Moderation is not their secret. It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions, that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will. — Phyllis McGinley

I've been attracted to Kate Moss since I was a teenager. — Ryan McGinley

If you miss your bus, just start walking. — Shan McGinley

I just can't afford to get bored, because if you've been blessed with a generous imagination, which a lot of actors have, to be engaged, to be stimulated, is to liberate your imagination. — John C. McGinley

Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life ... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic. — Ryan McGinley