Then Quotes

Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard.

I wear black skinny-fit jeans - I can't get away from them. It's funny because I wore baggy jeans for ages, then one day my friend convinced me to try on a skinny pair and I thought they were great.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

If the Net becomes the center of the universe, which is what seems to be happening, then the dizzying array of machines that will be plugged into it will virtually guarantee that the specifics of which chip and which operating system you've got will be irrelevant.

For the first time ever, overweight people outnumber average people in America. Doesn't that make overweight the average then? Last month you were fat, now you're average - hey, let's get a pizza!

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

I just like playing with makeup and clothes - so I really don't feel like there are rules, and if there are rules, then I think it's up to you to break them.

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.

Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I'm not actually acting. Then it's about me - and it should never be about me. It should be about the character.

I used to play sports. Then I realized you can buy trophies. Now I am good at everything.

It's the decomposition that gets me. You spend your whole life looking after your body. And then you rot away.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Then I think the sense of it being one community breaks down; but if you know instantly and respond within twenty-four hours, it's a very different sort of situation.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

You must do as your people do. If my people are poor, I must be poor. People ask me, 'Why don't you find a personal coach or a private car?' I can't. Then I won't be part of my people.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don't they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It's obvious I've got big ones and if people want to assume they're not mine, then let them.

Get mad, then get over it.

Only because The Runaways were my baby and there's no reason to get it back together except to totally have fun. If that's not the goal, then I don't want to do it.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

At first, I only laughed at myself. Then I noticed that life itself is amusing. I've been in a generally good mood ever since.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

I remember when I was in school, they would ask, 'What are you going to be when you grow up?' and then you'd have to draw a picture of it. I drew a picture of myself as a bride.

Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.

You know, as a young child, I lay in my bedroom and I swore to myself then: 'I'm not going to smoke and I'm not going to drink.' And I said I'm not going to just say that when I'm a kid. I'm going to stick to that as an adult. I kept that in mind my whole life.

Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

If I kind of like a guy, then I'm a fantastic flirt. But with a guy I truly like, I get painfully shy.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.