Too Involved Quotes & Sayings

To reject censorship after studying the risks involved is very well. To reject it ex cathedra, in the tones of Calvin pronouncing a dogma, eyes and mind closed to the possible consequences, the even marginally possible, is to make things too comfortable for oneself. — Storm Jameson

How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot? You had flung yourself into the action, filled with adventurous impulses: and then? Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records situations decided by others, who submits to whims, finds himself involved in events that elude his control. Then what use is your role as protagonist to you? If you continue lending yourself to this game, it means that you, too, are an accomplice of the general mystification. — Italo Calvino

Jack: Rose, you're no picnic, all right? You're a spoiled little brat, even, but under that, you're the most amazingly, astounding, wonderful girl, woman that I've ever known ...
Rose: Jack, I ...
Jack: No, let me try and get this out. You're ama- I'm not an idiot, I know how the world works. I've got ten bucks in my pocket, I have no-nothing to offer you and I know that. I understand. But I'm too involved now. You jump, I jump remember? I can't turn away without knowing you'll be all right ... That's all that I want.
Rose: Well, I'm fine ... I'll be fine ... really.
Jack: Really? I don't think so. They've got you trapped, Rose. And you're gonna die if you don't break free. Maybe not right away because you're strong but ... sooner or later that fire that I love about you, Rose ... that fire's gonna burn out ...
Rose: It's not up to you to save me, Jack.
Jack: You're right ... only you can do that. — James Cameron

I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man's assertion of power and control, but if he didn't think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means. — Abigail Tarttelin

In short, I ran away. I was about to fall in love. Aside from being opposed to getting involved with a guy, I'm a dried-up old man, just like he said. He's too dazzling to be with me. He's beyond me. — Kou Yoneda

My thing is, I like to do things as long as they're relatively fluid or easy. Not to say that there isn't any effort involved in making something happen, but I don't like to push things or force things too much. — Reggie Watts

My favorite recordings are the ones that feel like there were no middlemen in the creation. That's the biggest problem with most films and records being made today - too many people involved. I think it dilutes the artist's intent and inspiration. — M. Ward

A teasing smirk flitted across his face, as he completed his thought, "I'll try not to take it too hard if I fail miserably, because you can be the world's greatest skeptic ... "
"Nah ... " I coughed out a little chuckle, "not when you're involved. I'm your number one fan ... You couldn't shake me if you tried." I gave him a playful wink, adding musingly, "Though I might stop short of hanging out in the bushes with binoculars ... "
"Well, then," he grinned, "clearly you're not my number one fan. — M.A. George

On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light. — Michael Haneke

Security Division of NASA: Headed by Werner von Braun. Nazi headquarters were moved to the Caribbean after World War II. The National Security Council, patterned after Hitler's intelligence apparat, provided the framework inside the White House for political assassinations, Watergate "Plumbers" and election manipulations. Agents from military intelligence and the armed forces were concealed inside defense projects. The Syndicate worked with the Defense Industrial Security Command. Robert Sheridan, appointed by George McGovern to "investigate Watergate for the Democrats," was the direct liaison to departments involved in the Kennedy assassination. The Watergate parallels are too great to not suspect a continuous working of this operation.28 — Mae Brussell

I've always been a visual person, I'm formerly a graphic designer. I've always seen myself as an observer. I like to maintain objectivity and don't get too intimately involved in my subjects. — Sufjan Stevens

Make a run for it! A voice in my head commanded me. Make a run for it, before it's too late! This voice was clearly sensible. However, sometimes I wasn't sensible, especially when intrigue was involved. — Adele Rose

He had always wanted Daisy, with an intensity that seemed to radiate from the pores of his skin. She was sweet, kind, inventive, excessively reasonable yet absurdly romantic, her dark sparkling eyes filled with dreams. She had occasional moments of clumsiness when her mind was too occupied with her thoughts to focus on what she was doing. She was often late to supper because she had gotten too involved in her reading. She frequently lost thimbles and slippers and pencil stubs. And she loved to stargaze. The never-forgotten sight of Daisy leaning wistfully on a balcony railing one night, her pert profile lifted to the night sky, had charged Matthew with the most blistering desire to stride over to her and kiss her senseless. — Lisa Kleypas

I think it's essential for writers to be involved in the recording process as things can often go wrong in this area. Voice actors are all too often presented with a wad of XL sheets, no proper character notes, context or reference and are just expected to perform. — Rhianna Pratchett

There is no right and wrong, and precepts are for fools. Every thing is just as it is! And we must experience things without condemning them, because if we condemn them, then we are becoming too involved. — Ru Freeman

That is, adoration was patient and waiting while love or, if you liked, plain sexual passion banged everything about. It either shouted or thought it knew too much, and it had always left him cold and had not involved his heart. Therefore, if he wanted to get involved now it would be on his own terms and at his own pace. — Bessie Head

As an aspiring actress, having casual one-nighters, doing drugs and travelling to foreign locales at the drop of a dime was simply part of the landscape. One which Charm wholeheartedly and enthusiastically embraced. Peaches was far too familiar with Charm's wild escapade's to do more than raise an eyebrow to her casual gutter talk. One story had involved two Egyptian police officers, half a pound of weed, and if there were such a thing, one of the minor pyramids. — Tirumalai S. Srivatsan

From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters. — Deborah Cox

Any actor is happy to be involved with something that's challenging, controversial, and not easily palatable. Things that are too dumbed down or easy to swallow are uninteresting ... It's good when people have such a polarizing response. — Adam Driver

oh, why am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid - ? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their level and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their attention. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It's about how some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they're too blind, too emotionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth's dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath. — Stephen King

Though when she thought of it after, it was rather unprofessional behaviour, but sometimes when people are involved, business has to stop being business and the human must win. However, Kitty couldn't ignore the underlying truth that they both hung on to that hug for a little too long. — Cecelia Ahern

I don't think there is too much art involved in what I do. — Giorgio Moroder

As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional. — Richard Foreman

Musically, though, you're a character and you're singing a song. If you're not your own character, you're the character in the song, most of the time. Even blues musicians, a lot of them who were the most realistic, at times, they were singing a song and portraying a character in the song. There's something to be said for getting involved in the emotion of a song, too, with the characters. — Jack White

If you worked with Darrell, or for him, the dealings rarely remained confined to business. Darrell put too much of his heart into everything else that he did to leave it out just because his head had got involved. Those two organs didn't often work independently of one another, except when a third (his liver) applied peer pressure. — Anonymous

There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections to fight. There is no question of courage involved. The people of both sections of this Union have illustrated their courage on too many battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities shoulder to shoulder whenever their country has called upon them; but that they may never come in contact with each other in fratricidal war, should be the ardent wish of every true man and honest patriot. — Robert Toombs

And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune- all the same, let us never forget how good we all once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, ... perhaps better than we actually are. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Usually, I think it's best to play the song for them once and have them mix it up on the spot, because when the logical mind gets too involved, I think it kills a lot of magic. I just think the subconscious mind is so much smarter, and unfortunately, people do not trust their subconscious. A lot of people just don't access to all of that, the secret genius that's inside of them. And it's so much easier to get it out of a musician if you don't give them a chance to overthink. — Larkin Grimm

The United States is too big and we are too involved with too many people for any president to be able to take actions that will be universally agreed to all day, every day and everywhere in the world. — William J. Clinton

The person who appreciates a great work of art has the feeling that the work grows in him as he becomes involved in a prolonged capturing of emerging marginal meanings. He feels that he, too, is creative, that he himself is adding to his experience and understanding. Moreover, he wants to confront the work of art many times. He is not easily tired of it, as he would be had he read a purely logical statement. He realizes that the work of art does not merely transmit information; it produces pleasure. — Silvano Arieti

Ironing was another massive and dauntingly separate task. Irons cooled quickly, so a hot iron had to be used with speed and then exchanged with a freshly heated one. Generally, there would be one on the go and two being heated. The irons, heavy in themselves, had to be pressed down with great force to get the desired results. But because there were no controls, they had to be wielded with delicacy and care so as not to scorch fabrics. Heating irons over a fire often made them sooty, too, so they had to be constantly wiped down. If starch was involved, it stuck to the bottom of the iron, which then had to be rubbed with sandpaper or an emery board. — Bill Bryson

I don't like to get too involved in the idea that "I'm a role model" and that everything I do is right. I don't think that's the case at all, but I think who I am at my core, and what I represent at my core, is something that is meaningful, and can be something that other people can gain inspiration from. — Mike Vallely

The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are convinced that the voting public is, too. They count on outrage, thereby spreading numbness. They cherish the prospect of partisan fury, thereby inspiring nonpartisan disgust. — Walter Kirn

If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control. — John Wooden

When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant. — James Salter

Anyone who has a two hundred-plus IQ runs the risk of just hanging out because you get too involved in your own thoughts and you just want to sit there and think about . — Brandon Stanton

The velocities and forces involved in anything at orbital altitudes were enough to kill a human with just the rounding error. At their speeds, the friction from air too thin to breathe would set them on fire. — James S.A. Corey

I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose. — Margaret Atwood

I am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. — Albert Einstein

I write what I want to write, and then, when it's finished, I use my judgment to see whether or not I think it's intrusive. If it is problematic, then I ask those involved. I won't necessarily do what they say. But I do consult. I haven't had too many problems. Nobody's really gotten angry at me. Nobody, as far as I know, has felt betrayed. — John Edgar Wideman

If you can get a teen leader in each sector of a student population, you can pull people in. Everybody wants to get involved, but most are too afraid. When they see a person they think is cool leading it, they're first to join. — Andrew Shue

Sometimes the principal emotion of the person arrested is relief and even happiness! This is another aspect of human nature. It happened before the Revolution too: the Yekaterinodar schoolteacher Serdyukova, involved in the case of Aleksandr Ulyanov, felt only relief when she was arrested. But this feeling was a thousand times stronger during epidemics of arrests when all around you they were hauling in people like yourself and still had not come for you; for some reason they were taking their time. After all, that kind of exhaustion, that kind of suffering, is worse than any kind of arrest, and not only for a person of limited courage. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We stare into each other's eyes and softly kiss speaking and saying more with the movement of our lips and the tips of our fingers than words will allow us to say. Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love. — James Frey

It is hard for people outside the White House to understand the constant daily problems and issues that come up that require the president's attention, but he can not let himself get too personally involved. — Fred F. Fielding

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art. — Jeff Koons

I think at a place like Harvard, our experience, I was involved with, at various stages, in trying to implement a new general education curriculum, our experience was that Harvard's all about specialization, that's not just true of the professori, it's also true of a lot of the undergraduates, too, and they come, they kind of know what they want to do, they select it because they have a strong aptitude for something in particular. — Louis Menand

It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food." p. 201 — F Scott Fitzgerald

I have missed you so much I could kiss you," he whispered.
September's face fell. "Oh, but Saturday! I've had my First Kiss and I didn't mean to, I didn't want to, but your shadow is very rude and impulsive, and he took it before I could say two words! And I've had my second and third and maybe fifth, too. Come to think of it, this has all involved rather a lot of kissing."
Saturday furrowed his brow. "Why should I care about your First Kiss?" he said. "You can kiss anyone you like. But if you sometimes wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too." His blush was so deep September could feel the heat of it.
She leaned in, and kissed her Marid gently, sweetly. She tried to kiss him the way she'd always thought kisses would be. His lips tasted like the sea. — Catherynne M Valente

I was so happy renting in New York City for so long because renting - or at least the way I rented, which involved never lifting a finger to better my surroundings - allows you to let things literally fall apart all around you. Then, when it gets to be too much, you just move on. — Maggie Nelson

I'm not mad about movies, there are too many people involved in the making of them, and they lack a definitive creative focus. — David Bailey

I'm fighting hard to make the world a better place, and you can, too. Get involved with your community, be a leader, set an example, be passionate, be your best. — Gabrielle Giffords

South Africa is not Cameroon. It's a strong economy. I think they should be the first ones setting an example - improving the legal punishments for those that are involved, reinforcing the borders from every angle, meaning that even the diplomatic plane that lands in South Africa should not have the green light to leave without having the plane inspected. Obviously, those guys are often involved. If I get killed for saying that, so be it. That is the fact. There's way too many important people that are involved that don't want to change. — Veronika Varekova

In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.
So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying "YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night, Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in."
And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they're being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them. — Neil Gaiman

There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved. — Frank Zappa

It's just too bad they have to die. They're totally bangable, you know?" "Bangable," Taylor mouthed in disgust. She wanted to show this boy another meaning for the word bang, and it involved his head against a steel door. — Libba Bray

Learn to let your thoughts exist on their own without getting too involved in them. — Russell Simmons

If you have a lawyer, sometimes you can get out of trouble. I've gotten into a lot of trouble because I didn't have a lawyer. I've also had some bad lawyers, too. But the good ones, the ones I liked, they became me. They became whatever situation I was involved in. When I felt pain, so did they. When I succeeded, so did they. They became me. They became whatever the situation was that they became involved with. — Mike Tyson

You feel it too, don't you?" "Feel?" "The heat between us," he clarified, and grinned as she shook her head unconvincingly. "I-I can't get involved," she said brokenly. "Why?" "It's my business, Jeb." "I'll make it mine. — Lietha Wards

There's nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved. — Irvine Welsh

Long distance hiking is not a vacation, it's too long for that. It's not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living ... life on the move ... heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine, companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are precious and important in life it is take them away. — Cindy Ross

On our flight back from Arizona where we adopted our daughter three years after our ungreen one-headed son a stewardess ... paused to to adore the little girl my wife was holding. The woman was very attractive and seemed happy and easy with herself - confident enough to say to my wife 'Well congratulations and my don't you look terrific too.' My wife said 'Well we've just adopted her.' And the stewardess said 'How wonderful Congratulations again I was adopted too.' Happily the enthusiastic remark was not lost on our three-year-old boy nor was it lost on him that in Pheonix we had stayed in a close to luxurious resort hotel. He didn't know or care about the dreary heavy rain that fell in Atlanta when he came into our lives - all he knew about adoption at this point really was that it involved a warm whirpool tub cornucopian buffet breakfasts and a fascinating differently private-partsed baby. — Daniel Menaker

Too many members of Congress are too involved in grabbing what they can for their states or districts without enough emphasis on overall fiscal restraint for the sake of the nation as a whole. We need a new era of fiscal sanity. I am not willing to subject my children and grandchildren to the level of debt that Congress has created. — John Ensign

I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. — Robert A. Heinlein

It's a big responsibility, too. Don't think being a duke is all fun and games. I have to ride out on the estate every day, beat the serfs, deliver babies in the spring, send around baskets of food at Christmas, collect taxes - I tell you, there's lots of work involved. Sometimes I wish I were one of the common people. Just sit around the cabin laughing and scratching. — Richard Bradford

What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare stand too near the cross in case they got involved) into heroes who would stop at nothing? A swindle? Hallucination? Spooky nonsense in a darkened room? Or Somebody quietly doing what He said He'd do - walk right through death? What do you think? — John Bertram Phillips

There are similarities between business and sport, in the pressures involved and in the fitness aspect too. — Peter Shilton

Omri refused to get involved in an argument. He was somehow scared that if he talked about the Indian, something bad would happen. In fact, as the day went on and he longed more and more to get home, he began to feel certain that the whole incredible happening - well, not that it hadn't happened, but that something would go wrong. All his thoughts, all his dreams were centered on the miraculous, endless possibilities opened up by a real, live, miniature Indian of his very own. It would be too terrible if the whole thing turned out to be some sort of mistake. — Lynne Reid Banks

Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you're lonely and of course they'll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly. — David Nicholls

Frequently, when I suggest to people that they detach from a person or problem, they recoil in horror. "Oh, no!" they say. "I could never do that. I love him, or her, too much. I care too much to do that. This problem or person is too important to me. I have to stay attached!" My answer to that is, "WHO SAYS YOU HAVE TO?" I've got news - good news. We don't "have to." There's a better way. It's called "detachment."3 It may be scary at first, but it will ultimately work better for everyone involved. — Melody Beattie

If music serves to convey feelings through the interaction of physical gestures and sound, the musician needs his brain state to match the emotional state he is trying to express. Although the studies haven't been performed yet, I'm willing to bet that when B.B. King is playing the blues and when he is feeling the blues, the neural signatures are very similar. (Of course there will be differences, too, and part of the scientific hurdle will be subtracting out the processes involved in issuing motor commands and listening to music, versus just sitting on a chair, head in hands, and feeling down.) And as listeners, there is every reason to believe that some of our brain states will match those of the musicians we are listening to. — Daniel J. Levitin

I contend that proposing too early in the sales process (aka Premature Proposal Syndrome) produces a less-than-ideal proposal and puts the seller at a disadvantage. Some of the possible dangers of prematurely delivering a proposal include not having identified the buyer's criteria for making a decision, all the key players involved in the decision, and the true underlying issues driving the request for a proposal. — Mike Weinberg

They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about ... — Graham Greene

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it. — Jo Brand

It's important that you work on things that you care about and do a good job and not be too worried about consequences. Don't be afraid to get involved. — Walter Munk

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory
meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion
is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. — William Maxwell

Don't put too many chefs to work. Sometimes they get too involved in the ingredients and are of no help. — Jose Andres

The truth a fairly important thing to hold on to when you've been pulled out of the sea after wanting to drown in it. I could've let the sea take me. I could easily be dead now, which is funny when you think of it. When I say funny, what I actually mean is weird and kind of disturbing.
When there's the loud sound of a siren screaming in your head it doesn't take too long before a feeling of not caring what happens washed over you and you become recklessly self- destructive. I used to be full of energy and happiness but I could barely remember those kinds of feelings. The cheerful, childish things I used to think had been replaced. A whole load of new realisations had begun to grow inside me like tangled weeds, and they were starting to kill me. That's why I'd make the decision that involved heading ogg to the pier on my pike in the middle of the night and cycling off it. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Was this for real? Andrew had forgotten how to be happy! He suspected that it involved unwarranted feelings of fondness for other people, too much self-esteem, a sort of long-term delusion that manifested as charisma, and a blocking out of certain things, like lonely people, depressed people, desperate people, homeless people, people you've hurt, people you like who don't like you, politics, the nature of being and existence, the continent of Africa, the meat industry, McDonald's, MTV, Hollywood, and most or all of human history, especially anything having to do with the Western Hemisphere between 1400 and 1900, plus or minus 200 years
but he wasn't sure. Why did it involve so many things? Maybe it was just too hard. — Tao Lin

And yet I know I am too young, that we're too young, for me to live my life only as it relates to you. If you had asked me to marry you the night you first told me about your acceptance, I would have embraced Princeton as part of a larger plan that involved me. I probably would have reacted differently.
I might even had said yes.
Alas, you didn't ask me then. You made plans for your future without me in mind, And that's okay. But how can you now ask me to arrange my life around you? — Megan McCafferty

I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. — Wallace Stevens

Life is either a reproducible, almost commonplace manifestation of matter, given certain conditions, or a miracle. Too many steps are involved to allow for something in between. — Christian De Duve

It's only when people get involved, when there's money involved, that you have a lot opinions around you. I try not to listen to them too much. — Anton Corbijn

[He] went on to say that during all those years he had done nothing at all, that all he had felt had been a need to live, to live actively, violently, noisily, a need to sing, to make music, to roam the woods, to drink a little too much and get involved in a brawl. — Edmond De Goncourt

To me, being brave is an element that is so important with stand-up comedy. It's not essential. There are many comics who were just funny, and that's fine, too. But that's never been what I was trying to do in comedy. I was always trying to do something that involved not pandering to the audience. — Bill Maher

Yeah, well, I'm pissed off that I give a shit too but I do. When I fuck you, I want you to know it's me, I want you to need me there with the very core of your being, clinging to me as if you'd die without it. I want it to be raw and real. Hell, even when Cupid was involved, at least I knew it was about us and not because I happened to be there when you were having a bad week. — Donna Augustine

I didn't do anything as active as deciding that I wanted to be a writer. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was the final authority on whether or not I was anything like a writer. (I'm a timid soul.) I just kept writing stories, because becoming a veterinarian seemed as if it involved too much dissection. — Kelly Link

I'm wearing three hats; I'm acting, producing, and directing. I was very involved in developing the script, too. But to me, that is very liberating. To me, the lower the budget, the more I want to be involved. I want to be more in control of my own destiny when there isn't much money involved, because you don't have the experts who can control your destiny. — Bruce Campbell

Family," she whispered. "So many people go through their lives with blinders on. They become self-involved and only want to think about their wants and their desires. They don't leave room for anything else, and then, too late, they realize how important their families were. — Julie Garwood

It was not his nature to believe that he should engage in any kind of meddling or become actively involved in politics. His vocation lay in the fulfillment of a poetic mission, and he wanted to carry that mission out to the last detail, conscientiously and freely. In this sense he cursed "the disturbance of war," not because he overvalued his cultural role and saw his special poetic work endangered but because to him, in the final analysis, war meant the victory of barbarism, with the result that any kind of cultural work -- and therefore his, too -- could become involved in a bloody power struggle and be destroyed. — Carola Giedion-Welcker

Blue loved this ponderous, scholarly Gansey, too involved with facts to consider how he appeared on the outside. — Maggie Stiefvater

In the penitentiary you learn this: don't lie. Don't lie, man. If someone catches you in a lie you leave yourself open to get snuffed. And all my life I lived in that eye of: tell the truth. Pay your debts. Don't get involved in other people's business. Do your number, do your time. And you learn to stand on your own. So, I am walking and standing on my own. People see me standing on my own and not too many people in your world can do that. And I don't realize that at that particular time. I don't realize how weak and mindless you people are. — Charles Manson

The water temperature finally rose, so I stepped in, and he followed me. It shouldn't have surprised me that our primary focus wasn't on getting cleaned up. We let the water run over us, and there was some soap involved, but mostly, we just lazily made out while we ran soap-slick hands over each other's bodies. I was too exhausted to get turned on, and he probably was too, but this? This was absolute heaven. Wet, slippery skin against wet, slippery skin, our mouths moving together like we planned to do this all night - it didn't get any better than this. — L.A. Witt

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain. — Daniel Keyes

My family is probably too involved in my life because they are my best friends, but I love that. — Blake Lively

He'd never be able to touch her, and as passionate as she was, she would eventually need a man who could. He'd never had to worry about these things before because he'd never been with a woman. Not even before his possession. He'd been too busy then, too involved in his job. Maybe he needed to join Workaholics Anonymous, he thought dryly. He had to be the only millennia-old virgin in history. — Gena Showalter

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

All of my life, when things got too difficult, I folded up the tent and went to bed. I couldn't stand a challenge ... I was terrified of confrontation. I was very laid-back, and just wouldn't get involved or fight back. — Phoebe Snow

Who is going to influence whom in the new association? Warren may have entered the ocean in California, but I am sitting down in Virginia with Ben Graham's beginner's book and "How to Read a Financial Report" by someone called Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. I am told I have to finish Ben Graham very soon because Warren is unwilling to pay the small fine involved in having the book out of the Omaha public library too long. — Katharine Graham

Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. — F Scott Fitzgerald