Siegmann Quotes & Sayings

If you can become more motivated, more focused, better at setting goals and making good decisions, then you're a long way down the path to becoming more productive. — Charles Duhigg

No, rebellion is what the Duke of Monmouth did, it is a petty disturbance, an aberration, predestined to fail. Revolution is like the wheeling of stars round the pole. It is driven by unseen powers, it is inexorable, it moves all things at once, and men of discrimination may understand it, predict it, benefit from it. — Neal Stephenson

An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. — Barry Lopez

There was a real fear that a euro-zone bank might fail, that we'd have a sovereign debt problem in one of the larger European economies. That's dissipated, thanks largely to the action of the European Central Bank. — George Osborne

I left halfway through my third year to start Lipstick On Your Collar, which was the first thing I ever did. — Ewan McGregor

Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written, it's like you've read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn. — Sherman Alexie

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. — David Foster Wallace

Sometimes, I feel like I'm just a step away from that, just one breakdown away from chopping my own dick off and slapping somebody with it. The only thing stopping me is that I happen to like my dick. It gives me some of the only pleasure I get out of this life I've been given. — J.M. Darhower

The biggest thing I've noticed with some of my favorite directors is their gift of sticking a bunch of strangers in a room together and making them comfortable and making them into a cohesive group. There's magic involved, because you don't know why anybody would pick this group of people. — Alison Pill

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, 'Oh, this thought is just occurring to me right now' - and speaking sincerely. — Ira Glass

It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes. — Richard Dawkins

A genuine primary is a fight within the family of the party - and, like any family fight, is apt to be more bitter and leave more enduring wounds than battle with the November enemy. — Theodore H. White