A Quote by Bill Gates

If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago? — © Bill Gates
If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?
If I had some idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?
I think that the line between television and features started to blur a couple years ago. The standards started to become the same, which is that the idea had to be very loud. The show didn't have to be loud; the idea had to be loud. It had to cut through the clutter.
No matter when you had been to this spot before, a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, or if you came back to it a million years from now, you would see some different things each time, but the scene would be generally the same.
As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I'd get a Grammy Award. In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest.
I start out with words, with the idea, the line. Then after I get a line or two, I try to find what melodic line those lines would be suited to. As soon as I find the form I can finish the song in my head.
Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.
Tears streamed down my face as I crossed the finish line. I was a new person, a runner.
I think the film [Aquarius] comes from that original feeling I had 18 years ago, when I was in a São Paulo supermarket. I was in line to pay for something, and when I looked up, I saw the little windows of a projection booth. That's when I realized the supermarket used to be a movie theater. They didn't even bother to change the walls. Years ago, "The Sound of Music" could've been playing in that space.
I would love to say that the world is changing in the movie industry for people of color, women, the LGBTQ community and other minorities since I began my career, and that we are evolving as a species, but I think that given this social and political climate, I'm at a loss. It's like running a marathon and thinking you're halfway done and you can see the finish line - but the finish line is actually the first checkpoint.
There's nothing worse than the guy who at the party goes, 'Oh, I had that idea two years ago.' Well, then, why didn't you do something two years ago?
Back 20 years ago, I was recording with Bruce Springsteen, and his producer called me and said I had to be in the studio the next day to finish the sessions, and I couldn't. I had to be in court, in California. All this took like 10 years out of my life.
What happened was I was invited to meet Tom [Hardy] to discuss a project that he had in his mind about an adventurer who returns to England from Africa with secrets and with a history, and the original idea was set some 80 years later than it is now. But in the conversation I really took to the idea and I'd wanted for a while to set something in 1830 and 1840 in London, so it struck a chord.
I have 16 years in Dallas. I would love finish it off there. But I also understand and am not naive enough to think that... it may need to be somewhere else. I think that's how this business works. So you have to be open to that idea, for sure.
But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn't that nothin' would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know better'n that. I've thought about it a good deal. . . And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I don't have no intentions of carvin' a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that's what I would like most of all.
I worked with Sidney Lumet years ago, and we had a long rehearsal process, and he would tape out the entire set on the stage, so I stole that from him.
The idea of stopping is not unmeaningful to me. I think there might be a time when, in theory at least, you'd say, 'Well I've mostly done what I want to do.' But how could you ever prevent a few years down the line some germ of an idea getting at you and you've got to do it again?
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