Prima Quotes & Sayings

I was a very extrovert kid. It felt normal to me to act. I always went to regular schools. I've never been catty or a prima donna, so I never had problems. I always had my seat at the cafeteria when I came back from acting. — Kirsten Dunst

The prima ballerinas who taught me were far more scary than Gordon Ramsay. They'd scream at me and pull my legs and arms, so after them Gordon was a piece of cake. — Jennifer Ellison

The only war is the war against the imagination. — Diane Di Prima

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I was so girlie and ambitious, I was practically a drag queen. I wanted to be everything at once: a prima ballerina, an actress, a model, a famous artist, a nurse, an Ice Capades dancer, and Batgirl. I spent inordinate amounts of time waltzing around our living room with a doily on my head, imagining in great detail my promenade down the runway as the new Miss America, during which time I would also happen to receive a Nobel Prize for coloring. — Susan Jane Gilman

I wasn't making it with the violin because I was playing all of the 'long hair' stuff. — Louis Prima

I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life — Diane Di Prima

Ancient traditions have long associated holy wells and springs as very special places of the Goddess or anima mundi: symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life. The dreaming sites, as they are called, have also been associated with visions, healing, and other paranormal experiences. In ancient Greece, for example, there were more than three-hundred medical centers placed at water sources, where patients experienced healing. — Christopher McDowell

Abul l'-Qasim al-Iraqi writes of such a tree, [...] 'Materia Prima', which can produce the form of the elixir, is obtained from one single tree, which grows in the 'lands of the West'. It has two branches, which are too high to anyone who would eat its fruit to reach without labour and effort, and two others whose fruit is drier and more wrinkled than that of the former. The flower of the first of the two branches is red, and the flower of the second is between white and black. The tree has two further branches, which are weaker and softe rthan th efirst four. The flower of the first of these two branches is black, and that of the second is white and yellow. [...] — Titus Burckhardt

I once dealt with a prima donna on a movie set. I won't say who, but his first name is a country. A communist country. Run by Fidel Castro. — Artie Lange

I can finish that off and get you something better," he offered.
"You'd eat my leftovers? ... " I felt like such a prima donna. "You're a king."
"I'm a ... hungry ... king," he shrugged, as he unassumingly glanced to the side. "I'm not picky. — M.A. George

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated. — George S. Patton

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it. — Toni Morrison

I will never give up my dream of being a prima ballerina and backup dancer for Justin Timberlake! — Haley Webb

Performing doesn't turn me on. It's an egomaniac business, filled with prima donnas - including this one. — Dan Rather

There are different rules for comic books now. You've got prima donna's that are dealing with the direct sales market, so if they say it's going to be late, then that's what you tell the dealers and it's late. — Mike Royer

Only here [in the Center] a new union can occur, as the Mysterious Pass is the ideal space and time to experience the interpenetrating fluctuations of Yin and Yang. The Mysterious Pass is therefore the primordial Chaos (hundun) containing the germ of life-the pre-cosmic sparkle of Original Yang and Original Yin-which is the prime mover and the materia prima of the alchemical work. — Monica Esposito

Live by the three 'F' rule: If they don't fuck you, feed you or finance you, they don't matter. - Maya Josephs, Prima of the Ridgeville Pride — Celia Kyle

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna - or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out. — Barbara Walters

I'm too homely for a prima donna and too ugly for a soubrette. — Marie Dressler

On his refusal to deal with Keith Primeau: We refuse to pay a prima donna, a petulant, pouting player who had 30 goals last year the same money as Toronto is paying Mats Sundin or Pittsburgh is paying Jaromir Jagr. — Peter Karmanos Jr.

Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina, — Maria Tallchief

After working fourteen-hour shifts in the mines, inhaling so much nickel they sneezed silver glitter, none could have expected a private performance from the prima ballerina of the Kirov. — Anthony Marra

Well, I'm not sure I know what you mean by a prima donna, but if something doesn't interest me or if someone bores me, or if I think they're a phony, I just don't bother with them, that's
all. — Bobby Fischer

The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. — Edward Robert Harrison

We're all eccentrics. We're nine prima donnas. — Harry A. Blackmun

FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. I will fail. We all will. And having failed, and gotten back up, and failed again, taught me that I can survive failure. This is a downfall in most modern stories: the hero always wins. Because while this story is inspiring, it's also false. In reality, not everyone wins. It's 100% true that no one wills all the time, and we expect that - every hero must fall at least once. But it's also 100% true that some people never win at all, and that's the thing we try so hard to ignore behind the pretty stories. I could spend the rest of my life trying to be a prima ballerina, and it would not happen. I would fail at that for the rest of my life. FAILURE TEACHES US WHO WE ARE. Because even though I know I would fail forever at being a prima ballerina, I also know that I am not someone who should be a prima ballerina. It's not who I am, it's not what I want. Of course I would fail at it. — Beth Revis

Whatever guilt is perpetrated by some evil prompting, is grievous to the author of the crime. This is the first punishment of guilt that no one who is guilty is acquitted at the judgment seat of his own conscience.
[Lat., Exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi
Displicet auctori. Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.] — Juvenal

Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka's adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her. — Willa Cather

Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes! There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty. — Thomas Sowell

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around. — Louis Prima

Paradoxically, in descending into the depths of the unconscious in order to deal with the prima materia of the shadow, we are simultaneously on the path of ascending to the truly real, as we become introduced to the higher-dimensional light worlds of spirit. — Paul Levy

Don't worry, Prima Donna. If you start to look faint, I'll drag your body to safety."
"My name is Hailey."
"Okay, Hailey. I'll drag your prima-donna butt to safety, right after I finish my lunch break — Eileen Cook

FACULTY PSYCHOLOGY is getting to be respectable again after centuries of hanging around with phrenologists and other dubious types. By faculty psychology I mean, roughly , the view that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life . Faculty psychology takes seriously the apparent heterogeneity of the mental and is impressed by such prima facie differences as between, say, sensation and perception, volition and cognition, learning and remembering, or language and thought. — Jerry Fodor

Hey, pretty thing," he said. "What's in the bag?"
"Holy water," said Jace, reappearing beside her as if he'd been conjured up like a genie. A sarcastic blond genie with a bad attitude.
"Oooh, a Shadowhunter," said the vampire. "Scary." With a wink he melted back into the crowd.
"Vampires are such prima donnas," Magnus sighed from the doorway. "Honestly, I don't know why I have these parties."
"Because of your cat," Clary reminded him.
Magnus perked up. "That's true. Chairman Meow deserves my every effort. — Cassandra Clare

They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master - I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov - my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That's for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood. — Maxim Gorky

Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas. But it's a wonderful game. — Queen Elizabeth II

It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. — Thomas Nagel

That's what we called him. Our prince. And we were princesses. God's princesses. His daughters, who deserved nothing less than God's best. And while we were determining God's best, the message was clear: don't settle for anything less. Ladies, we've gone nuts. Of course God wants us to marry a great guy. Of course he wants us to find someone who loves us, treats us right, and maybe even makes our heart beat a little faster. He certainly wants someone whose calling we can join, a man with whom we can serve God with effectiveness and joy. But while I'm all for understanding our worth in God's eyes, remember that we're not perfect prima donnas who deserve the best and nothing less. On the contrary, we're sinners who will someday marry other sinners. God has a plan for our future marriages, and it's not to fulfill all our dreams or give us a storybook ending. His goal is to work out his purposes and glorify himself. — Lisa Anderson

Vampires are such prima donnas, — Magnus

This was all an excuse, I think. I was doing fine. I had a 93 average and I was holding my head above water. I had good friends and a loving family. And because I needed to be the center of attention, because I needed something more, I ended up here, wallowing in myself, trying to convince everybody around me that I have some kind of ... disease. I don't have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn't a disease. It's a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven't done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn't count as anything. I'm finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn't call back. I'm finished. I'm expelled. I'm finished. — Ned Vizzini

It is still news to her that passion
could steer her wrong
though she went down, a thousand times
strung out
across railroad tracks, off bridges
under cars, or stiff
glass bottle still in hand, hair soft
on greasy pillows, still it is
news she cannot follow love (his
burning footsteps in blue crystal
snow) & still
come out all right. — Diane Di Prima

Elvis was incredibly cooperative. He would try anything. He wasn't a diva, no prima donna. When it came to work, he was a workhorse. — Jerry Leiber

But having considered everything which has been said, one could by this believe that the earth and not the heavens is so moved, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, this seems prima facie as much, or more, against natural reason as are all or several articles of our faith. Thus, that which I have said by way of diversion (esbatement) in this manner can be valuable to refute and check those who would impugn our faith by argument. — Nicole Oresme

A careless and blasphemous use of the name of the Divine Being is not only sinful, but it is also prima facie evidence of vulgar associations. — Hosea Ballou

I picked up an old microscope at a flea market in Verona. In the long evenings, in my imitation of life science, I set up in the courtyard and examined local specimens. Pointless pleasure, stripped of ends. The ancient contadino from across the road, long since convinced that we were mad, could not resist coming over for a look.
I showed him where to put his eye. I watched him, thinking, this is how we attach to existence. We look through awareness's tube and see the swarm at the end of the scope, taking what we come upon there for the full field of sight itself.
The old man lifted his eye from the microscope lens, crying.
Signore, ho ottantotto anni e non ho mai Saputo prima che cosa ci fosse in una goccia d'acqua. I'm eighty-eight years old and I never knew what was in a droplet of water. — Richard Powers

Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie. — Thomas Carlyle

'Prima Donna' is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience. — Rufus Wainwright

If the song was upbeat, we'd get out a funky Harry Connick, Jr. album, some Louis Prima big band, or a Bob Wills swing record for inspiration and swing for the fence, hoping to get that 'soundtrack to your life' vibe. And if it was a slow song, we'd go the other way and really make it worshipful. — Bart Millard

Looking back at it now, I really feel like it was a gift because I don't know if I have the talent to become a prima ballerina. It's such a hard job to have. I don't have any regrets about it. — Diane Kruger

In the darkness I thought of Fyodorovich, deep in the Kolyma taiga. It was the eleventh of October, and already, I imagined, the first light snows had dusted the area around Sunny Lake. I pictured the old man sitting alone in the sun by the lakeshore, smoking a Prima and gazing skyward as the last of the whooper swans flew south, squawking and trumpeting as they went. — Fen Montaigne

It's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, and a wound that will never heal. No prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey. Goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight, Matilda, too. — Tom Waits

There's nothing like walking out and watching the people get turned on. Nothing in the world could replace it. — Louis Prima

Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention 'the people,' the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset ... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms ... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it 'shall not be infringed. — Antonin Scalia

I've given parties that have made Indian rajahs green with envy. I've had prima donnas break $10,000 engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing button back in Ohio, I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make my guests go home. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I don't know why the publishers in New York don't take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas. — Gary Reilly

The popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They're certainly very nice to directors. I can't say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly. — Nigel Cole

I assume you are the sort of person who would go backstage after the opera in hopes of hearing the prima donna crying on the telephone, or walking in on the baritone fellating the basso buffo. I respect that-I was always the same way myself-though I suspect you are not very happy. Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions. I remember, even before this was visited upon me, how I envied those who eagerly did what they were told: those who married without complaint at father's behest; those who looked up rather than sideways in church; those, in short, who honestly believed in God, good kings, and righteous wars. — Christopher Buehlman

Loyalty cannot be too liberally insisted upon. Altruism in nature remains an exception. It poses a puzzle, being in prima facie conflict with the survival of the fittest and most selfish. — Peter Birks

The best thing to do with a mimeograph is to drop it from a five story window, on the head of a cop — Diane Di Prima

There are as many kinds of kisses as there are people on earth, as there are permutations and combinations of those people. No two people kiss alike - no two people fuck alike - but somehow the kiss is more personal, more individualized than the fuck. — Diane Di Prima

When I am paid a compliment, I must compare myself with the little donkey that carried Christ on Palm Sunday. And I say to myself: If that little creature, hearing the applause of the crowd, had become proud and had begun -- jackass that he was -- to bow his thanks left and right like a prima donna, how much hilarity he would have aroused! Don't act the same! — Pope John Paul I

The prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut. — Sandra Day O'Connor

Horses have powerful legs- but that doesn't mean they're prima ballerinas.
Elianna to Mariketa. — Kresley Cole

I think the fault is more with historicists who have stubbornly failed to develop a good theory of historicity. By simply resting on the feeble laurels of prima facie plausibility ('Jesus existed because everyone said so') and subjective notions of absurdity ('I can't believe Jesus didn't exist!'), the existence of Jesus has largely been taken for granted, even by competent historians who explicitly try to argue for it. — Earl Doherty

I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions. — Diane Di Prima

In the fifties ... we were so busy being cool that we didn't know how to say the word love — Diane Di Prima

If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made. — John Howard Yoder

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution. — Alison Weir

It really isn't anybody's business how many people we have working for us. What's offensive is that I'm portrayed as this prima donna with these sycophants telling me how great I am all the time. Yes, they do work for me, but we're working together for a higher good ... — Demi Moore

I think it's prima facie evidence for the existence of God because for me to grow up and actually end up working with Glen Campbell is almost unbelievable. — Jimmy Webb

Sweetheart, when you break thru you'll find a poet here, not quite what one would choose. — Diane Di Prima

The only time I eat alone is if I'm really tired or upset about something or on the phone to one of my friends, when it's easier to be alone. But you can't be too wrapped up in yourself ... it starts making you look a little bit prima donna. — Dakota Blue Richards

The huge egos of great chess players are legendary. Psychologists have been amazed by their vanity, have studied it, and anecdotes concerning it are abundant. But never before has there been such a prima donna as Bobby. Already he has managed to alienate and offend almost everybody in the chess world. That includes officials, patrons, writers, almost everybody and anybody who might be in a position to help him in his career. — Israel Albert Horowitz

Nah, I'm not a prima donna, but I just don't like being cold and wet. — Morris Chestnut

Maketa Groves has a strong, bright lyric gift. Her poems come out of music and are full of music. They bring us the sounds of the streets and the sounds of nature, and make us see once again that they are parts of the same song. She celebrates American lives as they are lived today: the mother scrubbing her kitchen floor at midnight, the drag-queens in the Tenderloin, the homeless woman knitting in the courtyard. This is poetry that relentlessly shows us the beauty in the world, with all its struggles and complexity, and demands that we go out to meet it with open hearts. — Diane Di Prima

The very things we wish to avoid, neglect and flee from turn out to be the 'prima materia' from which all real growth comes. — Andrew Harvey

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. — Gore Vidal

The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is — Bertrand Russell

Advertising is prima facie evidence that the man who pays believes that advertising is good. It has brought great results to others, it must be good for him. So he takes it like some secret tonic which others have endorsed. If the business thrives, the tonic gets the credit. Otherwise, the failure is due to fate. — Claude C. Hopkins

In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that. — Rufus Wainwright

MY THESIS, in simplest terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful; the role of government, then, is to keep the peace ... Keeping the peace means no more than prohibiting persons from unpeaceful actions ... When government goes beyond this, that is, when government prohibits peaceful actions, such prohibitions themselves are, prima facie, unpeaceful. — Leonard E. Read

And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima . — Thomas Hobbes

In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that "if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'."[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously. — Reza Aslan

A good part of what appears to us - prima facie - as objective reality is, instead, just a consequence of our conventions to discover it. — Felix Alba-Juez

My mom is actually a former prima ballerina, and all the women in my family are associated either with dance or choreography or acting, so I'm very lucky in a way because I grew up in a family of artists. I've been dancing since I was a little kid. — Ksenia Solo

Prima facie, every estate, whether given by will or otherwise, is supposed to be beneficial to the party to whom it is so given. — Tony Abbott

The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna. — Giuseppe Verdi

More or Less Love Poems #11:
No babe
We'd never
Swing together but
the syncopation
would be something wild — Diane Di Prima

You had to be an over-the-top, demanding, dramatic figure in order to progress as a woman in Europe over the last few hundred years. Now people say, "You're being such a prima donna," meaning you're being hard to deal with or crazy. It's a bit sexist. — Rufus Wainwright

MY LADY, WE ARE BEING HUNTED

possibility we are poisoned, possibility
there is no meat on the table, not even bait
in the trap. possibility they've already bought our parents.
possibility we'll run out of water; the salt marsh
is rising; we are followed; they've clocked our meeting
possibility this is an ambush
possibility they are downwind of us,
they've photographed the house, tattooed the children
possibility they've marked the bread with hexes
possibility the moon is theirs & netted
possibility the web of idea is upon us.
possibility we've lost this particular rumble.

who stole the sword we bedded; followed the fork
in the road where we left no footprints
who swallowed yr amber, lady, while we slept

possibility we can hide here indefinitely
possibility that we should cut & run — Diane Di Prima

Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness. — Steven Pressfield

Virtue consists in avoiding vice, and is the highest wisdom.
[Lat., Virtus est vitium fugere, et sapientia prima.] — Horace

There is actually a great book called Prima Donna by Rupert -Christiansen that deconstructs the myth. In fact, many of the women who were prima donnas were feminists and incredible forces for their time. — Rufus Wainwright

When they tear a workingman's hand in a machine or kill him, you can understand
the workingman himself is at fault. But in a case like this, when they suck a man's blood out of him and throw him away like a carcass
that can't be explained in any way. I can comprehend every murder; but torturing for mere sport I can't comprehend. And why do they torture the people? To what purpose do they torture us all? For fun, for mere amusement, so that they can live pleasantly on the earth; so that they can buy everything with the blood of the people, a prima donna, horses, silver knives, golden dishes, expensive toys for their children. YOU work, work, work, work more and more, and I'LL hoard money by your labor and give my mistress a golden wash basin — Maxim Gorky

She said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy. — Ilsa J. Bick

We weren't treated as prima-donnas. We had to roll up our sleeves and graft with the groundsman. Kids don't have to do anymore. That makes you appreciate things when it turns in your favour and you become a successful professional. — Colin Cooper

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna. — E. M. Forster

Optima dies ... prima fugit
(The best days are the first to flee) — Virgil

I've been a prima-donna. I was taken care of since I was 13. That's why I am the way I am today. I was spoiled, like a brat. I had anything I wanted. That's crazy to be that way all your life. Everybody's taking care of you, but manipulating you at the same time. Very few people have a life like that. Most people have to work like slaves their whole lives. I've never had a job in my life. What I know how to do is hurt big, tough men - in the street and off — Mike Tyson