Penn Quotes & Sayings

It's funny because I've resisted acting as a career for most of my life. But both my parents told me if I ever want to direct, I should act first because no director should direct until they know what it's like to be in the actor's shoes. — Dylan Penn

Do you think that sometimes, there are those that are meant to be together?" he asked, not breaking his gaze.
I thought for a moment. "I don't know, maybe." I shrugged.
"What if, there are two parts that were once a whole. Not here on earth, but," he looked skyward, then at me again with those searing golden eyes. A slight, nervous smile crept up my right cheek. He continued, "And those two parts weren't what made them whole, but the parts of them did."
"You've lost me now," I said, as I loosened my grip on his embrace, shaking my head.
"I'm talking about soul mates. Split aparts. It's a theory of Plato's. Except, what if the split aparts were never one, but each split apart was a part of one that was once whole? — Tania Penn

Let us, then, try what love will do, for if people once see we love them, we should soon find that they would not harm us ... force may subdue, but love gains; and they who forgive first, win the laurel. — William Penn

Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times. — James Gray

I read a lot of books to my children, and they all seem really good. I think people have gotten really good at children's books. — Penn Jillette

You 'ain't found out yet we're women-folks, Nanny Penn," said she. "You 'ain't seen enough of men-folks yet to. One of these days you'll find it out, an' then you'll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an' how we'd ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence an' not complain of what they do any more than we do of the weather. — Mary Wilkins Freeman

Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment. — Penn Jillette

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies. — Sean Penn

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom. — William Penn

I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship. — Penn Jillette

When you start out writing, your inner creative is just a little seedling with tiny leaves above the earth, peeping out into the air for the first time. — Joanna Penn

The 'Gossip Girl' idea and ideologies, like, they sort of encourage this certain kind of, like, materialism and superficiality that isn't, I would say, the best thing in the world. — Penn Badgley

The world is full of sluts on skates. From Penn-warren's "All the Kings Men. — Martha Miller

There was nothing particularly wrong with them; they were just the ordinary garden variety of human garbage. — Robert Penn Warren

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest. — William Penn

Everybody has questioned my heart, questioned my training ethics, this and that, but I never did something as cowardly as to take any sports-enhancement drug ... That's one thing no one can ever say about me, you know? That I was a coward and took sports-enhancement drugs, because I was afraid I was going to get my a** kicked in front of millions of people. So anybody out there who said I never had no heart, at least I wasn't a coward. — B.J. Penn

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different. — Sean Penn

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. — Robert Penn Warren

One thing that is true in TV is that you do hire the directors. As the writer, it's very different than in features, where you feel like, "If I want this to be this way, I better direct it." — Zak Penn

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. — Irving Penn

We need a president who realizes that there's no government business in show business. — Penn Jillette

I started out as a juggler, so I know what it means to spend eight hours a day, seven days a week practicing something that people just dismiss with a wave of hand. — Penn Jillette

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future. — Penn Jillette

My body really, really wanted to reproduce when I was 15. It took a lot of civilization, socialization, willpower and some emulsion polymerization technology for me not to reproduce at 15. — Penn Jillette

A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly. — Sean Penn

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, Oh, just let me enjoy the poem. — Robert Penn Warren

You live through ... that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneous with yours. It is, in other words, History, and what you are is an expression of History. — Robert Penn Warren

We are too apt to love praise, but not to deserve it. — William Penn

If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it. — Penn Jillette

Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection of inaction, which is peace, just as all being is but a flaw in the perfection of nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God is nothing. Nothing can give no basis for the criticism of Thing in its thingness. Then where do you get anything to say? Then where do you get off? — Robert Penn Warren

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of. — Robert Penn Warren

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures. — Robert Penn Warren

Levity of behavior, always a weakness, is far more unbecoming in a woman than a man. — William Penn

Love labor: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind. — William Penn

The unspoken word never defeats one. What one does not say does not have to be explained. — William Penn

There is no reason for the government to limit political speech. — Penn Jillette

Everyone's goals are the same with very small differences. I mean, the goal of a socialist and the goal of a libertarian are exactly the same. The goals are happiness and security and freedom, and you balance those. — Penn Jillette

Whatever one considers art to be, there is in many people a hunger to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing that. — Sean Penn

I was a vegetarian when we shot the first film(Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle), and I generally eat organic as much as possible. I know this is so disappointing to the audience, which is why I don't talk about it a lot, but I don't smoke weed, I don't eat fast food. — Kal Penn

I grew up as a Christian. I suppose at some level I wanted to believe someone was watching over me. — Penn Jillette

If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom. — Penn Jillette

Those who have entered into the afflictions of Christ for His Church's sake know something of what they mean, for they have learned in a measure to pour out their souls unto death, in fellowship with Him. — Jessie Penn-Lewis

The first thing I said to myself on 9/11 was, 'There go our civil rights.' I found out by comparing notes later that George Carlin and I both said that at the exact same time. That's the first thing that popped into our head. — Penn Jillette

The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see. — Robert Penn Warren

Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but spring out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. You happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping. — Robert Penn Warren

Everyday is an atheist holiday. — Penn Jillette

Next to God, thy parents. — William Penn

People are more afraid of the laws of Man than of God, because their punishment seems to be nearest. — William Penn

The spirit of [William] Penn will not be stayed. You cannot set limits to such knightly adventurers. After their own day is gone their spirits stalk the world, carrying inspiration everywhere that they go and reminding men of the lineage, the fine lineage, of those who have sought justice and right. — Woodrow Wilson

I've never revved my car at a light for an attractive woman or an auto-rival, not even as a joke. — Penn Jillette

an 'old English lady'. Henry, though, had other — Thomas Penn

Man, being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects. — William Penn

If you've gotten yourself into a situation when Clay Aiken is going to talk about his feelings with you, it's time to kill yourself. — Penn Jillette

The usefullest truths are plainest; and while we keep to them, our differences cannot rise high. — William Penn

If you don't pay your taxes and you don't answer the warrant and you don't go to court, eventually someone will pull a gun. Eventually someone with a gun will show up. I want everything the government does to be done, I just want it to be done voluntarily. — Penn Jillette

Choose a friend as thou dost a wife, till death separate you. — William Penn

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel ... not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, What do I really feel about this? — Robert Penn Warren

We can never be like it was at Penn State with Joe Paterno. That was an anomaly in an of itself. — James Brown

I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone. — Penn Jillette

[Jim Graham] had been a linebacker at Penn State, and was seriously old-school. I mean, really old-school; like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. — Randy Pausch

But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen. — Penn Jillette

But it wasn't a Primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the backroom of Casey's Saloon rolled into one, and when the smoke cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic Party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes, and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood. — Robert Penn Warren

In the last analysis, be always of whatever truth you would live.
For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a soundless voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire,
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in which all joys should rejoice. — Robert Penn Warren

Show is not substance; realities govern wise men. — William Penn

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world. — Robert Penn Warren

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

I can make a better living as an actor than I can as a director. Though I certainly would prefer to be directing movies. — Sean Penn

More power to the people who get to choose their roles. I don't. — Chris Penn

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) — Jonathan Santlofer

I have a graduate degree from Penn State. I studied at Penn State under a noted Hemingway scholar, Philip Young. I had an interest in thrillers, and it occurred to me that Hemingway wrote many action scenes: the war scenes in 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' come to mind. But the scenes don't feel pulpy. — David Morrell

But I knew how the play would come out. This was like a dress rehearsal after the show has closed down. — Robert Penn Warren

Let us then try what love can do to mend a broken world. — William Penn

[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time. — Robert Penn Warren

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? — Robert Penn Warren

If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be. — William Penn

I do not think I was a hothead - not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was a boy. Slavery is an abomination on the American soul, ineradicable stain on our body politic. But Penn Center lit a fire that has never gone out, and the election of President Barack Obama was one of the happiest days of my life. — Pat Conroy

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid. — Penn Jillette

It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you? — Penn Jillette

This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from the other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principal. — Robert Penn Warren

If you look at another
woman, I'll rip your eyes out. Touch one and I'll cut off your hands. Kiss
her and I'll sever your tongue from your mouth.
"You don't want to know what I'll do if I find out your dick got
anywhere near another woman. So the choice is yours, you can live life as a
blind, mute eunuch with stubs at the end of your arms or you can close the
club... — Jenny Penn

If thou rise with an Appetite, thou art sure never to sit down without one. — William Penn

Naked Truth needs no shift. — William Penn

There is no country but the heart. — Robert Penn Warren

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain. — Toby Jones

I'm not saying that I've cheated, being in an intense love with somebody while also feeling the pulls of being a young man, especially being an object of attention. — Penn Dayton Badgley

People like Bill Maher, who brags about being a cynic, it sickens me. I am the least cynical person I know, and I am very, very skeptical. — Penn Jillette

A man in business must put up many affronts if he loves his own quiet. — William Penn

And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost. — Robert Penn Warren

Though the house itself was a fortress, still, Isaac Penn had thought to make sure that anyone who did manage to break in would be kept busy. Thus the vault was not a vault but rather a solid plug of molybdenum steel which extended into the wall for five feet. — Mark Helprin

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without. — Robert Penn Warren

Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team. — Teller

Most atheists bristle at the thought that atheism has anything to do with faith, but not Penn Jillette. — Ray Comfort

Well, it was interesting because when I was going to do it the first time in my head was Leonardo DiCaprio [for Chris] and Marlon Brando was going to play the character that Hal Holbrook eventually played. But then when it wasn't to be and there was no promise that it ever would be I think some part of me didn't want to attach specifics to it anymore - actors or anything else - because I wanted to see it made that much more badly. — Sean Penn

She always stood so trim and erect, and you had the feeling that all her grace and softness was caught in the rigor of an idea which you could not define. — Robert Penn Warren

I hardly saw Osbert that week because he went to school, unlike Isaac and Edmond and Piper, who were supposed to be homeschooled, which as far as I could tell meant reading whatever books you happen to be interested in, and every once in a blue moon having Aunt Penn say Have you learned any geography? and them saying yes. — Meg Rosoff

I don't storyboard. I guess it dates back to my days in live television, where there was no possibility of storyboarding and everything was shot right on the spot - on the air, as we say - at the moment we were transmitting. I prefer to be open to what the actors do, how they interact to the given situation. — Arthur Penn

I'm a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who performed at kids' parties. I can still perform a vanish, credibly, and I still, in special circumstances, will make a balloon animal. — Ira Glass

Then after a long time Annie wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a big girl and I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In the dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen. — Robert Penn Warren

When you're shy, the worst thing you can do is go into all these casting rooms and be scrutinized. But with shyness, I think you just have to bite the bullet. — Dylan Penn

[ 1600 Penn] is an ensemble comedy about a family. It just happens to utilize the fact that my character is now being forced into this world as a jumping off point. But, in no way is it the crux of the series. It's simply an introduction to the world. — Josh Gad