Whatever It Works Quotes & Sayings

Well, you know, whatever works works. If, you know, if laying your hands on someone and giving them healing makes them feel better, what does it hurt? It's a good thing. — Rosemary Altea

You take a picture of yourself in some exceptional situation - skydiving or whatever. People always post those photos because it works - you're saying something about yourself that begs a conversation and that's what the users are there for. — Christian Rudder

Meaning they'll reach the wild safely," he said. "They'll find water, food, shade, whatever they need until they find a safe place to live." "Why can't you place a blessing like that on us?" I asked. "It only works on wild animals." "So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned. "Hey!" I protested. — Rick Riordan

The ukulele totally fits that whole hipster community or whatever you want to call it, but then at the same time it works great in nursing homes where senior citizens get together and play, and then as the traditional Hawaiian instrument with people doing the Hula and strumming the ukulele and singing. — Jake Shimabukuro

If your life works, and you work in it, then it's okay, whatever is happening is okay. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Was Fergus Urvill anywhere, still? Apart from the body - whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure - was there anything else? Was his personality intact somehow, somewhere?
I found that I couldn't believe that it was. Neither was dad's, neither was Rory's, nor Aunt Fiona's, nor Darren Watt's. There was no such continuation; it just didn't work that way, and there should even be a sort of relief in the comprehension that it didn't. We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constipatory, too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss. — Iain Banks

Like a Uniform December 3 WHAT IF ANYTHING have you and I done to do battle against the great darkness of things? As parents and the children of our own parents, as wives and husbands and friends and lovers, as players of whatever parts we have chosen to play in this world, as wielders of whatever kind of power, as possessors of whatever kind of wealth, what other human selves have we sacrificed something of our own sweet selves to help and heal? "Bear fruit that befits repentance!" thunders the Baptist. "Give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light," whispers the prayer we pray. Bear fruit. Put on light like a garment, like a uniform. That is the place to stop and also the place to start. It is the place to stop and think - think back, think ahead, think deep. It is the place to start and be. — Frederick Buechner

The simplest definition of prayer is communicating with God. That's it. Did you miss it? Let me say it again. Prayer is simply communicating with God. That one uncomplicated thought began to revolutionize my whole prayer life. What is communication? It's transferring a thought, feeling, emotion, or idea to another person. So prayer is giving God my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas, by whatever means works. It doesn't have to be formal. It doesn't have to be long and dry. It's simply communicating. — Craig Groeschel

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works. — Tom Robbins

Faith is the substance of whatever it is that we hope for. The important thing is that we teach that faith is connected to good works and responsibility. — T.D. Jakes

A.: Whatever; you must know how it works. An artifact containing... raw feelings, unprocessed sights and sounds and pains that the brain interprets- is that too crazy?
DR. BELKNAP: No. It has existed for thousands of years. It's called a book. — Edgar Cantero

When Derek hesitated, Chloe said, "If you leave, either I go with you and take the same risk or stay here, with strangers. Without you."
He scowled at her.
"Yes, it's a low blow," she said. "But I'll use whatever works right now." — Kelley Armstrong

I love the Kerastase Hair Oils and the Philip Kingsley Elasticizer. They're great for making my hair really soft, but to be honest, any cheap conditioner works. Just leave it on and let it soak in, and it really helps, whatever you use. — Abbey Clancy

A soul must gain wisdom by gathering information in whatever way works best. It is impossible to force wisdom on another, because each person has a choice to determine how and if it will be received. — Molly Friedenfeld

Whatever you eye falls on - for it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Everything is super personal. Basically all of the songs are 'this is my life and what I feel about it.' That's how my brain works and thinks about things. It's really strange because I never really think about what I want to write about - it sort of just comes out. I literally say whatever is in my brain. — Elena Tonra

People talk about method actors, meaning someone that's prepared very, very well, or whatever they mean when they talk about it. But the right method is whatever works for you. And what works for me on any given day is going to be different. — Viggo Mortensen

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art. — Sydney Pollack

Hmmm. See, in this world, Xirena, the Simi does what she wants and akri, he say, 'Okay, Simi, whatever you want, Simi.' Unless it involves eating people; then he usually says no, but that's the only time. Other than that, he do what the Simi says. See how that works? (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It was never my dream to be famous. I didn't start acting to be a movie star. I started in the theater and my desire was to get better at my craft. It's still my desire. I don't consider myself a movie star, nor do I really have the desire to be one. I'm just an entertainer ... An actor who works hard at his craft. Whatever labels people give me, that's not really me or part of my process. — Denzel Washington

Whatever anybody believes as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, it's fair enough, and works, and I think, is real, and matters. I don't happen to have those beliefs, as much, you know, I don't believe in those things. — George Clooney

Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. — Octavia E. Butler

I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us. — William S. Burroughs

I wanted to keep things as normal as possible for the trainees, so I led my usual morning class. I called it Magic Problem-Solving 101. The trainees called it Whatever Works. — Rick Riordan

[Science] works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are
worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true. — Carl Sagan

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. — Jonah Goldberg

Forget the buildings and the monuments. Let the softness of dark come in, all those light-years between stars and planets. Cities were the works of men but the earth before and after those cities, outside and beneath and around them, was the dream of a sleeping leviathan--it was god sleeping there and dreaming, the same god that was time and transfiguration. From whatever dreamed the dream at the source, atom or energy, flowed all the miracles of evolution--tiger, tiger burning bright, the massive whales in the deep, luminescent specters in their mystery. The pearls that were their eyes, their tongues that were wet leaves, their bodies that were the bodies of the fantastic.

Spectacular bestiaries of heaven, the limbs and tails of the gentle and the fearsome, silent or raging at will . . . they could never be known in every detail and they never should be. — Lydia Millet

They've said: PRAYING isn't enough in this situation.
Contrary to belief, prayer is all you need. If you believe that it isn't, it's only because you haven't truly experience the power of praying in your life.
Keep praying. When there was a battle, one man prayed, and God caused the sun to delay setting, so they could win the battle. (Joshua 10)
The prayers of the Righteous, they have overwhelming impacts and I encourage you to include that in whatever your next move is in this situation.
I don't march, I don't openly protest... No important reasons... I just don't... but I can do what I do best... Help behind the scenes.. and PRAY.. because, I know it works.
Peace and Blessings — Jennifer M. Malone

Really, the definition of what makes us "human" confuses me. Showing "humanity" is like this synonym for "treating others kindly" or "like you want to be treated" or whatever, when that isn't really human at all. Whoever came up with that definition is a real scammer, and a real genius. More than anything else, humans have been terrible to each other throughout history, and this is still the way it works today and will continue to work. It's how we're wired. I have "human understanding"; that's it. — A.D. Aliwat

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.' — Angus Young

There is a Power around you that knows and that understands all things. This Power works like the soil; it receives the seed of your thought and at once begins to operate upon it. It will receive whatever you give to it and will create for you and throw back at you whatever you think into it. — Ernest Holmes

But there are still plenty of people who will tell you that the most evil thing about Karl Marx was what he said about religion. He said it was the opium of the lower classes, as though he thought religion was bad for people, and he wanted to get rid of it. But when Marx said that, back in the 1840s, his use of the word "opium" wasn't simply metaphorical. Back then real opium was the only painkiller available, for toothaches or cancer of the throat, or whatever. He himself had used it. As a sincere friend of the downtrodden, he was saying he was glad they had something which could ease their pain at least a little bit, which was religion. He liked religion for doing that, and certainly didn't want to abolish it. OK? He might have said today as I say tonight, "Religion can be Tylenol for a lot of unhappy people, and I'm so glad it works. — Kurt Vonnegut

There's also a way that you have of being precise but also allusive, that works well for me - it's something about the open-hearted way you frame your queries. Instead of feeling daunted or discouraged, I feel excited to give whatever it is a try. This takes a lot of editorial wisdom and confidence - to know just how to get the writer to take that extra chance. — George Saunders

The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience. — Henry David Thoreau

Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.
One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace. — Terri Windling

Over the years, I think, people - actors, writers, whatever - lose their frame of reference. Their frame of reference is based on somebody else who did this or did that. Performances. So it just becomes a reflection of what already works. Like a warm-up. And that's an invitation to be inauthentic. — Michael Keaton

I like women who haven't lived with too many men.
I don't expect virginity but I simply prefer women
who haven't been rubbed raw by experience.
There is a quality about women who choose
men sparingly;
it appears in their walk
in their eyes
in their laughter and in their
gentle hearts.
Women who have had too many men
seem to choose the next one
out of revenge rather than with
feeling.
When you play the field selfishly everything
works against you:
one can't insist on love or
demand affection.
You're finally left with whatever
you have been willing to give
which often is:
nothing. — Charles Bukowski

You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don't have enough dopamine to feel good. So then you feel bad and go back to the addictive behavior to get more dopamine. The strange thing is that it works with what we think of as uppers and downers and whatever you call gambling - sidewaysers. — Bill Nye

How much is an hour of your time worth? It's worth whatever wage you would get if you spent that hour working. If you work for an hourly rate, this is an easy calculation. Even if you work for a salary and a fixed number of hours, the principle is the same: It's whatever your salary works out to per hour. — Emily Oster

And I still say it was just a coincidence;' he muttered pugnaciously. 'You say it too! Look at me and say it! It was just a coincidence. That happened to be the nearest place on the dial where they both met exactly, those two hands. My blows dented them. They got stuck there just as the works died, that was all. Stay sane whatever you do. Say it over and over. It was just a coincidence!'
Outside the tall French windows, in the velvety night-sky, the stars in all their glory twinkled derisively in at them. ("Speak To Me Of Death") — Cornell Woolrich

I'm also really fulfilled by having a production company and producing movies, and learning about how that works and happens. It's a totally, entirely separate skill set and it's one that I happen to also enjoy. So, I intend to cultivate all of those things until I can't anymore. That's my goal. I love to be challenged and busy, and so far, so good. I'm just going to do whatever I can to continue to encourage that. — Zachary Quinto

Back when I was a devout Pharisee, I scowled at those who talked about grace, assuming they wanted both salvation and permission to do whatever they pleased. And when I came to discover grace as a biblical concept, it frightened me at first. The old idea of being saved by works has its benefits. It's a system where God owes you. You've been helping him out with all your good deeds. He can't very well put you through difficulty, since you're a taxpayer. You've paid your dues, you have your rights. But the beyond-belief teaching of grace is that we get what we can never pay for and more, including joy and hope and the desire to please him. I like living by God's grace a lot better than relying on my own efforts. — Phil Callaway

It seems to me that whatever path you choose to take, in the end its up to each of us to try, test and live what we find out, to apply it and see what actually works, and that's the exciting and challenging part of this very real adventure. — Linus Roache

Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers. — Carl Sagan

Whatev was the first hand sign I learned at college, but there were several popular then. There was the thumb-and-index-finger L held against the forehead, which meant Loser. The whatev W could be flipped up and down, W to M to W to M, in which case it meant Whatever, your mother works at McDonald's. 'Cause that's the way we rolled back in '92. — Karen Joy Fowler

Who does his task from day to day and meets whatever comes his way, Believing God has willed it so, has found real greatness here below. Who guards his post, no matter where, believing God must need him there, Although but lowly toil it be, has risen to nobility. For great and low there's just one test, 'tis that each man shall do his best, Who works with all the strength he can, shall never die in debt to man. — Edgar Guest

When the organization called soul is free, moving and operative, initial as well as terminal, it is spirit. Qualities are both static, substantial, and transitive. Spirit quickens; it is not only alive, but spirit gives life. Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit. He lives in his works and his works do follow him. Soul is form, spirit informs. It is the moving function of that of which soul is the substance. Perhaps the words soul and spirit are so heavily laden with traditional mythology and sophisticated doctrine that they must be surrendered; it may be impossible to recover for them in science and philosophy the realities designated in idiomatic speech. But the realities are there, by whatever names they be called. — John Dewey

When some one use "You", in stead of "Us", It makes you cry, because in love whatever happens it need to be happen in both end, if its only "I" or "You" then the value of love becomes singular and everyone can feel or need to know, in LOVE singular never works ... — Nutan Bajracharya

Once I asked Maharajji how it is possible for a man to remember God all the time. He told me the story of Narada (the celestial sage) and the butcher: Vishnu (one of the aspects of God) was always praising the butcher and Narada wondered why, since the butcher was always occupied and Narada spent twenty-four hours a day praising Vishnu. Vishnu gave Narada the task of carrying a bowl of oil, full to the brim, up to the top of a mountain, without spilling a drop. The task completed, Vishnu asked how many times Narada remembered Vishnu. Narada asked how that would be possible, since he had to concentrate on carrying the bowl and climbing the mountain. Vishnu sent Narada to the butcher and the butcher said that as he works he is always remembering God. Maharajji said then, Whatever outer work you must do, do it; but train your mind in such a way that in your subconscious mind you remember God. — Ram Dass

Straight girls like me. They flirt with me to get whatever they want. Of course it works. — Lea DeLaria

But that's how it works: no matter what the odds of a given event, that one-in-whatever-it-is has to come in at some point, or it wouldn't be a one-in-whatever chance. It would be zero. — Ben H. Winters

They don't teach this in school anymore?' Anya asks and clucks in dismay. 'When I was a girl, we made memory palaces to helps us memorize for our examinations. You chose an actual place, a palace works best, but any building with lots of rooms would do, and then you furnished it with whatever you wished to remember ... Bur once you had learned the rooms, in your imagination you could add anything you wish. So, when we needed to memorize the Law of God, for instance, we closed our eyes and put a question and answer in each room. Page 68-69 — Debra Dean

I definitely make an effort to work on different styles of music: not working on too many post-rock bands, or too many heavy bands, or too many folk bands, or just whatever. I have no desire to be known as somebody that just works on a single style of music and would rather avoid it, actually. — John Congleton

In the earlier part of the 90s, I was really hell-bent on discovering how new technology works and how to make records entirely without a producer, which isn't necessarily what fans wanted. But I had to do it because I felt it was in my destiny or whatever. — Johnny Marr

I like to express myself creatively and it doesn't matter the medium. Whatever medium I choose at that moment, whatever works the best. — Joshua Radin

I don't know the real answer, my answer to anything which is essentially human relations is education. Whatever the answer is, education must be its measured component and if you try to educate with generosity not with triumphalism I think sometimes it works, especially young people, that's why I teach, I've been teaching all my life. — Elie Wiesel

It's nothing more than a mental habit to idealize another time, another condition, another reality. It is simply a way to avoid the reality of our lives right now. And in avoiding the reality of our present circumstances, we avoid the miracles they offer. Everyone does it because that's the way the ego mind works. But we can stare down this self-defeating habit and cultivate a truer perspective: that wherever we are is the perfect place, and whatever time it is now is the perfect time. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't improve things, particularly ourselves. But indulging the thought that if only we were somewhere else things would be better is a surefire way to experience pain. — Marianne Williamson

Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty. — Samuel Johnson

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want. — Chris Bohjalian

I'm a woman of lip gloss. Estee Lauder has an amazing lip gloss line. But I even go as far as to use some Wet 'n Wild, you know, old school! It's kind of like whatever works. I find that with lip gloss, there really is no difference in quality there. — Sufe Bradshaw

The old adage that people only want what they can't have or what they can't tame - is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That's really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time - that's when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it's in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don't care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can't have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into. — C. JoyBell C.

To achieve works of meaning, a writer (or any artist) must cut into himself and leave his soul on the canvas, exposed for anyone to do with what they please. Reject it. Spit on it. Swallow it whole. Whatever. It is done. — Mardra Sikora

Sometimes you can incorporate things that you've experienced in your life and use that. And other times you know what that feeling is of hurt, of love, of anger, of depression, and you do whatever it takes to get there in your mind and use it to your advantage, whichever way it works best. — Dianna Agron

Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed. — Bell Hooks

Whatever I've experienced in my life is a part of my story, and I'm proud of that. But it's someone who wakes up early, works all day, believes in charitable work, business-minded, diligent, accountable, problem-solving ... I'm so much about school, consistency and tradition. — Drew Barrymore

A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know. — Oliver Stone

Whatever's inside making me what I am, it's like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it. — James Dean

All things considered, I'd rather have monkeys," Kishan shouted.
I shivered. "Tell you what. We'll rent King Kong and The Birds. Then you can decide."
He yelled as he ran from a swooping bird, "Are you asking me on a date? Because if you are, it will definitely give me more incentive to come out of this alive."
"Whatever works"
"You're on. — Colleen Houck

As everyone knows, there is no intelligence in coercion or forcing another into action or realization. And if the name of the galactic game is superior, intelligent harmonization, it must be played so that the local intelligence is taught or shown how it works in such a manner that it comes to its own conclusions. In other words, the galactic code of honor is to manifest and demonstrate harmony by whatever means possible. — Jose Arguelles

I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I found the concept of hindsight bias fascinating, and incredibly important to management. One of the toughest problems a CEO faces is convincing managers that they should take on risky projects if the expected gains are high enough. Their managers worry, for good reason, that if the project works out badly, the manager who championed the project will be blamed whether or not the decision was a good one at the time. Hindsight bias greatly exacerbates this problem, because the CEO will wrongly think that whatever was the cause of the failure, it should have been anticipated in advance. And, with the benefit of hindsight, he always knew this project was a poor risk. What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves. — Richard H. Thaler

Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. "Yes ... and" rather than "No ... but." "The idiot is bound by his pride," he says. "It always has to be his way. This is also true of the person who is deceptive or doing things wrong: he always tries to justify himself. A person who is bright in regard to his spiritual life is humble. He accepts what others tell him - criticism, ideas - and he works with them. — Michael Lewis

If you have been living your life saying to yourself, "I will be happy when I have a better house," "I will be happy when I get a job or promotion," "I will be happy when the kids are through college," "I will be happy when we have more money," "I will be happy when I can travel," or "I will be happy when my business is a success," you will never have those things because your thoughts are defying the way love works. They're defying the law of attraction. You have to be happy first, and give happiness, to receive happy things! It can't happen any other way, because whatever you want to receive in life, you must give first! You are in command of your feelings, you are in command of your love, and the force of love will give back to you whatever you give out. — Rhonda Byrne

The well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he became a man of gentle heart ... — Plato

See what? I didn't see anything. There were no scary people there. Nothing freaky. I'm going home now and tomorrow I'm going to have the doctors check for a brain tumor. Full battery of tests. Whole nine yard. Whatever's wrong with me, we'll find it and deal with it. At this point, my vote is either tumor or space alien testing. Either one works for me. (Geary) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If men or women don't feel [the way I do], then don't live your life that way. Whatever works for your relationship. It's not just sex. I feel like that about dinner, about taking care of who you're with. — Chris Brown

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be? — Haruki Murakami

I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with ... For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants ... but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being. — Leonid Borodin

The best way to make change is to know how something works. If you're going to go build something or change whatever it is, if you don't know how it works and you're trying to go make a change in it, the first thing you're doing is you're spending time figuring out how it works. The same thing happens in organizations. — Brian Krzanich

(Kate) had found multiple titles by individual authors scattered willy-nilly through the collection. It made her want to pull her hair out. Obviously!- an individual author's body of work all belonged on one shelf, the works arranged, in turn, by whatever system was most suitable: by volume number, alphabetically by title, or by the year of publication, or, in case of playwrights, works grouped by genre- tragedies with tragedies, comedies with comedies, histories with histories, and so on. — Gaelen Foley

I grew up being a huge fan of Bruce Lee, and this quote always stuck out to me. He said, "Water can flow, or it can crash. If you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot." It always made sense to me to adapt the flow and roll with whatever the situation is and to not think about it too much and get caught up in it. It works easier for me that way. — Gary Clark Jr.

I think I'm a kind of a person who works hard at whatever I do, literally from being a waitress to being on television. I always try to give 110 percent to whatever it is I'm doing. — Teri Hatcher

But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive. — Elizabeth Zimmermann

The subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind. With the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impresses upon it. — Thomas Troward

Craft' gets a bad rap. Mediocre art is not caused by craft; it is caused by artists. Good art employs whatever craft works best. — Walter Darby Bannard

This is why it is not true that culture can be, even temporarily, suspended in order to make way for a new culture. Man's unbroken testimony as to his suffering and his nobility cannot be suspended; the act of breathing cannot be suspended. There is no culture without legacy, and we cannot and must not reject anything of ours, the legacy of the West. Whatever the works of the future may be, they will bear the same secret, made up of courage and freedom, nourished by the daring of thousands of artists of all times and all nations. Yes, when modern tyranny shows us that, even when confined to his calling, the artist is a public enemy, it is right. But in this way tyranny pays its respects, through the artist, to an image of man that nothing has ever been able to crush. My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury of our history: Let us rejoice. — Albert Camus

My homeland,' says the guest, 'no longer exists. My homeland was Poland, Vienna, this house, the barracks in the city, Galicia, and Chopin. What's left? Whatever mysterious substance held it all together no longer works. Everything's come apart. My homeland was a feeling, and that feeling was mortally wounded. When that happens, the only thing to do is go away. — Sandor Marai

It's hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I'm sad to say that this method works. If you don't give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. — Alan Cumming

Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value. — Thomas Jefferson

"Some people develop a love of something and that love is a lifelong love. Like, say, a scientist. He is on a quest for knowledge. He loves theories. He loves testing his theories. He loves this quest for knowledge. And maybe he is only a teacher or a professor but he still loves this knowledge, he loves what he does and he wants to share it with people. Sure, there are some days when he doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning and go to the job but when he stands back and, and... puts it all into perspective... he realizes it's not that bad at all. He likes what he does. On the other hand, you take a man who works in a factory. It's unrealistic to think this man likes putting the same bolt in the same part or whatever for eight to twelve hours a day. He does it for a paycheck so he can support his family or his booze habit or whatever. But every day, when he goes to work, he has to put himself into something like a coma because he hates what he does so much. Do you follow me? — Andersen Prunty

Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand. — Kenneth Branagh

Being a fiction writer is really like being an actor, because if you're going to write convincingly it has to sound right and play right. The only way that works is to emotionally and technically act out and see the scene you're in.
There's no better job in the world, because when I sit down at that computer I'm the world's best forensics expert, if that's what I'm writing about that day. Or I'm some crazed psycho running down a dark alley.
Or I'm a gorgeous woman looking to find a man that night. Whatever! But I'm all of those things, every day. How can you beat that? — Ridley Pearson

I took Second City out of desperation, and that's what ended up working out. It shows that you should be doing a lot of different stuff, taking whatever opportunities are there, to see what works. — Bill Hader

It's just part of whatever motivates guys and whatever they say. Ultimately it comes down to how well you play. What I've learned over the years, a lot of guys talk. What you need to do is go out there and play, back it up. They've been able to back it up, so that's why it works for them. Hopefully we can go out there and do our talking on the field. — Tom Brady

I think that part of everybody's success is due to their looks, but it just works in different ways. If you're whatever society calls attractive, then people say that you got ahead because of your looks-especially if you're a woman. If you're whatever society says is not attractive, then they say you got ahead because you're compensating, you couldn't get a man or whatever. So everybody pays the same penalty for the fact that women are assessed for their outsides rather than for what's in our heads and our hearts. — Gloria Steinem

Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read - my own or other people's works - it all seems to me not short enough. — Anton Chekhov

I believe that we should all be free to believe what we want and not be condemned for it," I say without a thought. "I believe in a higher power and that it works within us. Whatever the name doesn't matter, it's the thought behind it that matters. It's the way we live our lives that matter and as long as I believe that there is someone in the sky there to protect us, no one here will ever break me. — Celia Mcmahon

The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them. — Freya Stark

But this is my contentment, that I've lost what I never needed and what I need I can never lose: these two things, universal nature and one's personal virtue.
For this is the intention of the creator of the world, whatever he may be - whether an all-powerful Deity, or some incorporeal Reason contriving vast works, or a divine Spirit pervading all things from the least to the largest with a uniform energy, or Fate, or an inalterable sequence of Causes clinging one to another - whatever the Intender, I say, this is his intention: that nothing of ours can fall under the control of others except that which is finally and truly worthless to us.
The best of any man lies beyond the power of other men, either to give it or take it away. — Walter Wangerin Jr.

Embrace the moment, your life will be whatever you want to make of it. Be inspired to do great works. You aren't finished yet. Go for your goals! — Sereda Aleta Dailey