#william

Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word ↗

— Brenda Ueland

#genius #reality #william-blake #writing #art

Marry Prince William? I'd love that. Who wouldn't want to be a princess? ↗

— Britney Spears

#love #marry #prince #princess #want

My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation. ↗

— Solomon Burke

#besides #bring #buddy #curb #different

Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to Firing Line when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#cable-television #cable-television-in-the-us #conservatism #conservatism-in-the-us #gore-vidal

I thought I'd be a success even back in the mailroom at William Morris. ↗

— David Geffen

#even #i #morris #success #thought

As an actor, I felt I couldn't compete. I wasn't as cute as the leading man; I wasn't as brilliant as Robin Williams. ↗

— Phil Hartman

#brilliant #compete #cute #felt #i

When he died, Emerson was thought of as the representative American writer par excellence, and his point of view was still so potent that William James was honored to be asked to speak at a centenary celebration. ↗

— Howard Mumford Jones

#american writer #asked #celebration #died #emerson

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated. ↗

— Denzel Washington

#before #college #first #got #graduated

I think Robbie Williams is an utter and complete prat. His last record was a pile of rubbish. ↗

— Pete Waterman

#his #i #i think #last #pile

Robin Williams understands sonic performances. He understands what it's like to change your voice up. ↗

— Billy West

#like #performances #robin #robin williams #sonic