Up Quotes

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

There is in every woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night.

Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

I have a wife and a son, but the gay rumors have started. I guess it's a sign that I'm moving up the ladder.

As a kid, we would drive up and down 77 North - that's our highway - there would be office buildings on the side of the highway and I'd be like, that's what my house is going to look like when I get older. I'm going to start making my house look like this.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.

I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

I've got to stand up for the sport.

I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me.

I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.

I'm excited about there being more of a sisterhood these days. Back in the '90s there was a lot of hate - the women I looked up to as artists were dissing me! It's not so patriarchal these days - there's more love and a lot less hate!

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.