A Quote by George W. Norris

Lincoln would be just like me. He wouldn't know what the hell to do. — © George W. Norris
Lincoln would be just like me. He wouldn't know what the hell to do.
It is very hard to answer the oft-posed questions about how Abraham Lincoln would respond to some current condition. My favorite story on that count is that the late great Lincoln scholar Don Fehrebacher was asked, during the struggles over bussing for racial balance a few years ago, what Lincoln would say about "bussing" and he thought awhile and then answered : "what Lincoln would say would be: "What's a bus?"
It would be pleasant to believe that some of Lincoln's DNA is actively swimming around in somebody's soup, but all the evidence is against it. And of course, there's always the risk that what we might get would be more Robert Todd Lincoln than Abraham Lincoln.
One decision I made in writing 'Henry and Clara' was that I would keep Lincoln's appearances and any dialogue by him to an absolute minimum, because I think readers don't quite believe it when novelists have Lincoln walking around and saying things. They just know they're in the presence of stage machinery.
I just disagree so much with the way the Catholic Church says things like, 'If you're not a good person, you'll die and go to Hell; there's a purgatory there...' If I was talking with a Holy Ghost, it would scare the living Hell out of me.
I get a message from Stephen Falk saying, "Hey, if I wrote a part for you in You're The Worst, would you do it?" I was like, "Yes!" And then, of course, later I found out it's going to be me playing myself sort of Larry Sanders-style where I'm the total opposite of what people would expect me to be. I was just like, "Okay, what the hell." But it's really funny to portray me as somebody who is pretending to be a stoner just to succeed.
The thought of playing a New York detective scared the hell out of me. I didn't know if people would believe me in the role just because of my physicality, which made me want to do it even more.
I’m sure you gathered this by now: I just do what I want. Have I made out with chicks? Hell yeah. Did I think it was awesome? Hell yeah. I wouldn’t call myself bi. Like, if I didn’t eat meat for a week, it doesn’t make me a vegetarian. So I like people, and that’s just it. I like people.
I used to think there would be a blinding flash of light someday, and then I would be wise and calm and would know how to cope with everything and my kids would rise up and call me blessed. Now I see that whatever I'm like, I'm pretty well stuck with it for life. Hell of a revelation that turned out to be.
If they don't have the Grand Ole Opry, like they do in Tennessee, just send me to hell or New York City, it would be about the same to me.
For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.
I don't [even] know the number of books on Abraham Lincoln. Ten thousand, twelve thousand? I have seen various numbers. It seems like every generation is always trying to come to terms with Lincoln.
I've seen some of those comments and they hurt me a little bit, saying 'This guy's a cheater.' And I feel like if you know me, you know my character, and just my person, you know that's not what I would do, not what I would ever do.
If I were overweight because I ate too much, I would have far more of a complex. I would know if I just stopped eating and showed a little discipline I would be thin. But there's not a hell of a lot I can do about being short. You just gotta run with it.
If the press really thinks Obama is Lincoln, they ought to treat him like they treated Bush, 'cause that's how they treated Lincoln. His critics compared Lincoln to an ape; they called him an illiterate baboon.
It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference.
People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.
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