I always felt good about myself. I was just an average person. I always felt I could do anything anyone else could. If an average person makes up their mind to do something, they can.
Most atheists bristle at the thought that atheism has anything to do with faith, but not Penn Jillette.
After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.
My perspective was always being on a number one show doesn't mean anything if I'm not still working consistently at 40 to 50 and 60 years old.
I knew, regardless of anything else, singing in front of an orchestra was going to be inspirational. It would feed me.
Homosexuality is against nature. Sexual expression is permitted only within marriage, between man and woman, male and female. Anything else is an abnormality and is against nature.
I usually played out and out heavies. No one else 'saw' me in any other role. No one else had ever believed I could be anything but a heavy. It was a heavy in a picture with Clara Kimball Young that June Mathis saw me and decided to cast me as Julio. 'There is the man for Julio,' she said, 'He, and no one other.'
Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything.
Anything my staff does in my office is pursuant to congressional rules.
I never thought of myself as a Surrealist. I didn't think of myself as anything. I try not to. We all have these egos.
I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.
My grandmother was energetic and fearless - a talented poet and songwriter. She was also interested in chemistry and history and medicine, taking care of the people in her hacienda in Mexico, delivering babies. She could have become anything, but this was the 1930s, and she was forced into an arranged marriage.
What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.
I used to look like an American flag. The Padre uniform makes me look like a taco. Actually, the transition has been great. I've made 25 new friends, and I never thought I wanted to be anything other than a Dodger, but this is fun.
I don't have anything against Jimmy Fallon. I love Jimmy Fallon. He's my dude.
I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don' t watch it now. I don' t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!
Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?
I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife, I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby, you know I'll do anything locally, but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'
One of the more challenging things in life is not being the guy who does the cheating, but not saying anything about it and going along with it.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
The trouble is that after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods.
Plain white T-shirts do it for me every time. You can spend anything from £3 to £50 on a T-shirt, but I've bought some great ones from H&M, as well as shelling out on Duffer Of St George and a Polish label I discovered while filming 'Robin Hood' in Hungary called Scotch And Soda.
Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.
For a lot of people, one of the reasons they don't like to work for founders of startups is that they can be sensitive and protective around what they've built. You have an emotional attachment to the early marketing and technology materials, and you don't want to hear that anything's wrong with them.
Edith Wharton was a natural story-teller. As plots do in real life, hers flow directly from character. Her prose is so effortlessly elegant that you're rarely aware as they purl by that the sentences are so pretty. More concerned with what is put than how it is put, she also understood that you only say anything at all when you say it well.
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn't smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.
If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
Very few people are original. There's very little original anything out there. Because to be original means you have to stand alone.
To discuss a Martin Amis book, you must first discuss the orchestrated release of a Martin Amis book. In London, which rightly prides itself on the vibrancy of its literary cottage industry, Amis is the Steve Jobs of book promoters, and his product rollouts are as carefully managed as anything Apple dreams up.
That's what's so wonderful about being in this business because you're constantly surprised. You have to be up for anything.
I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.
In many, many parts of the world, being a female, you're really just wallpaper. If you take care to blend in, no one would think in a thousand years that you were doing anything suspicious.
As a citizen of a community, if you never vote or engage, don't be surprised when the outcome doesn't serve your interests; you've never done anything to push things in the right direction.
When you're on stage singing, you're naked. Your voice is something very intimate, and that's why I'm scared every time before I perform. It doesn't matter if I'm singing for a king or a queen or the Pope, it's enough to be in front of anybody. I suffer, but I can't do anything about it.