John Quotes

I don't like to see all my energies, all of my youth, wasted in fur coats and radios and slipcovers.

I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.

Lost' was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

You don't really see Asian men together very often. It's very rare in life.

The objective is not just to save the crew or just to get the ship up, but the superobjective is to get back home to the family and protect the family.

It's really weird to be in more than one franchise because an actor's life is so nomadic, and so it's a real privilege to get back together with people.

There are times when thinking about something is the worst possible policy.

And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.

You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.

It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.

The thing about cats, as you may find, Is that no one knows what they have in mind.

The success of the poem is determined not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.

General rules have been legislated into being by past masters.

I have one head that wants to be good, And one that wants to be bad. And always, as soon as I get up, One of my heads is sad.

I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.

Who could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible Could reason half the jungle out of being.

Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.

And what is Life? - An hour-glass on the run

Wildness is my suiting scene.

To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,And empty shadow of what is to be;Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,And ends but only when our being ends.

I am the self-consumer of my woes.

Tasteful illumination of the night, Bright scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth.

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint: Things least to be believed are most preferred. All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint, Are readily believed if once put down in print

When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?No, rather smile away despair

I lost the love of heaven above I spurned the lust of earth below I felt the sweets of fancied love And hell itself my only foe.

I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.

Throw not my words away, as many do;They're gold in value, though they're cheap to you.

Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood Of vague indifference; and yet with me Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea Of grass that waves around thee!

How oft a summer shower has started me; to seek the shelter of a hollow tree

I don't want to have to start being unselfish again. The great thing about being on your own is you do what you damned well like.

Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.

I would like to do my own eulogy, and then shoot myself and then get in the coffin.

Other people, you know, put a latex rubber on, you know, to become sexually excited. There's so much I don't understand.

years ago we would have been burned for this. Now what I am suggesting is that we've advanced.

Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.

I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.

When people quote sketches to me, half the time I don't know what they're talking about so I have to sort of go, aha, yes, oh yep, I remember that and lie my way out of it.

Certain kinds of clichés are the narcotics of the middle class.

We cannot afford to exclude any vision - any way of looking at the world - that human beings have invented for ourselves.

Genres do exist because frequent users of any large bookstore can instantly tell what any piece of fiction is supposed to be about by its title, its cover and its location in the shop.

It never gets old, being told you are a traitor and in league with the terrorists because you disagree with current administration policy.

For an omnipotent and omniscient being, God has made some really lousy earthly staffing decisions.

The best leaks always take place in the urinal.

We are going to lose the war on terror because all of our agents are tied up investigating the GOP.

There is no significant man-made Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is badly flawed.

There has been no warming over 18 years.

I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.

With Stripe, people who previously operated online or offline in a very limited capacity now have all the tools to work like a real online business. That's a very valuable thing.