A Quote by Michael Dirda

Long ago, I realized that my only talent - aside from the rugged good looks, of course, and the strange power I hold over elderly women - can be reduced to a single word: doggedness.

Michael Dirda

Quote Topics

Aside Course Doggedness Elderly Good Good Looks Hold I Realized Long Long Ago Looks Only Over Power Realized Reduced Rugged Single Single Word Strange Talent Women Word

Quote Author

Michael Dirda
American - Critic
Born: 1948

There are thousands of good-looking women out there. Longevity for a heroine doesn't come only with good looks: talent matters.

Samantha Akkineni

One of the interesting things I discovered, talking about your grandmother, is I did a search of my uses of the word "elderly" in my copy over the years, and you will not be surprised to hear that the older I got the less often I used the word elderly in print.

Anna Quindlen

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.

Meg Wolitzer

I'm always gonna be all over my CD the most, of course. My talent is my talent. I ain't really tripping off no ego; I just like to make good music with good people.

Meek Mill

I like clothes. When I realized as a child that you had to wear them, and it takes the same amount of effort to look good or not, I figured out long ago that I only wanted stuff that I loved and looked good in.

Nick Wooster

It looks like President Bush will be handing over power to the Iraqis by June 30th. That's amazing and not only that, but it looks like he'll be handing over power to the Democrats by November 2nd.

David Letterman

They walked still farther and the girl said, "Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?" No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it." Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.

Ray Bradbury

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again.

Christina Baker Kline

If you do the task before you always adhering to strict reason with zeal and energy and yet with humanity, disregarding all lesser ends and keeping the divinity within you pure and upright, as though you were even now faced with its recall - if you hold steadily to this, staying for nothing and shrinking from nothing, only seeking in each passing action a conformity with nature and in each word and utterance a fearless truthfulness, then the good life shall be yours. And from this course no man has the power to hold you back.

Marcus Aurelius

[The film Woman Walks Ahead] is from a long time ago. I wrote that ages ago. It looks gorgeous and Jessica [Chastain] is so good that I've got high hopes.

Steven Knight

So you're in love with her?' she went on. A word again ... When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one's own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another ... When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists. 'We love one another,' I said.

John Wyndham

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

bell hooks

Of course, women have long exercised influence behind the scenes. A few thousand years ago this drove Aristotle to distraction: 'What difference does it make whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.'

Stacy Schiff

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!