Barbara Quotes

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up.

Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.

Look, all this is about is utilizing the rules of the Senate, using a majority of the senators, to make sure that we get health reform done. We cannot wait another day.

Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.

As the daughter of a 25-year veteran of the armed forces, I am incredibly thankful for the sacrifices our women and men have made in Iraq, and continue to make in Afghanistan.

Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it.

I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.

A complainer is like a Death Eater because there's a suction of negative energy. You can catch a great attitude from great people.

I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective support for coming to critical consciousness – in communities, in institutions, among friends.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.

I'm afraid of being lazy and complacent. I'm afraid of taking myself too seriously.

Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.

My mother was my first jealous lover.

The place that seems most dangerous is exactly where safety lies.

A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.

I know actors come around and they always talk like that, but I don't do publicity if I don't like the film.

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.

I've always thought that it's good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that's how consensus is constructed.

Everybody thinks that they're going to time the market, they're going to sharpshoot the market, and buy right at the bottom. The truth of the matter is that nobody is good at it.

If you let your mind talk you out of things that aren't logical, you're going to have a very boring life. Because grace isn't logical. Love isn't logical. Miracles aren't logical.

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.

If your day is full of little mean, dark thoughts, is it any wonder you feel crabby? Maybe it's because you let your mind run wild like a dog putting its nose into garbage everywhere.

a meaningless phrase repeated again and again begins to resemble truth.

A lot of people don't know what they want or they want much less than they deserve.

In New York City, the meek don't inherit the earth. The big mouth does.

I don't necessarily think that installation is the only way to go. It's just a label for certain kinds of arrangements.

That's what I loved about show business, no two days were alike. It's an exciting life.

There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brain and in your hands, wherever you go.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!

If we don't help each other, who will?

If you get labeled a winner, people come along for the ride. Might as well enjoy it and they should too.

I believe tears are holy, because they show us that the ice of our heart is melting.

If a house is priced appropriately, make a bid 10 percent below that amount.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

The place of the arts in the classroom is essential in encouraging invention, ambition, and an understanding of the importance and pleasures of living an examined life.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.

I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.