A Quote by Spencer W. Kimball

I go down the street, I say hello to everybody, a stranger or otherwise. I know that they do not know me, but I like to say hello and I think they appreciate it. I notice their faces light up with a smile and I believe that if all the people in our great city...would do that, the whole world would begin to say it is the "Friendly City." You can do a tremendous thing here. We get so absorbed, we do not always speak to our friends. Speak to them, even strangers, you are not going to give offense.
I don't always like walking down the street and making sure that I smile and say hello to everybody who's walking their dog in the opposite direction. But I do do it. And it's a small, tiny thing to do. But to me, it means 'I see you. You're not invisible to me.'
I'm already a personable person. I always try to smile and get to know somebody and say hello - even when people are trying not to talk to me.
Entertainers are nothing special. Maybe we have a talent for singing a song, but other people have talents. I wish fans would just come up and say 'hello' before asking for an autograph. I wish they would just say, 'Hello, I'm so and so, and I just want to shake your hand.' I'm impressed when I find people like that. Most people just say, 'Sign here,' and treat you like a statue.
If you can't smile and have fun, you're in trouble. So if somebody in the stands says hello, I'm going to say hello back. Why shouldn't I? I know what I'm doing in this game. I'm still going to be ready to hit when I step in the box.
Some people don't even say hello. They come up and say, 'Can I take your picture?' and I'm, like, 'Why?' And they say, 'Oh, you're that guy.' And I'm, like, 'Why do you want a photo of me if you don't even know my name?'
You know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world.
I will say, though, that San Francisco is a very friendly city. It's the kind of place where people smile at you and you can strike up conversations on the street, so there's always an adjustment when I come back to New York. If I smile at someone on the street in New York, then they think there's something up - like, "Why is she smiling?"
When I meet someone, I look at their eyes and their smile and seek out the good first - it's easy to find when you're looking for it. You let a person shine with their own light and try to connect it to yours. As soon as I say hello, I go right to that light and I don't care who you are! I know we're all pieces of the same thing - I go for that common light because I know it's in all of us.
A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other.
When I go to Colombia or Mexico, I speak Spanish. When I go to Italy, I speak Italian. When I'm in Germany, I speak German. Would I expect them to speak English in these countries? No. I mean, great if they do, but no. Would I be offended if in Spain they say we speak Spanish? No. If I was an immigrant there, no.
I learned early on that one of the secrets of campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them.
When people say hello to me, I feel like maybe I know them from somewhere, because they say, like, 'Hi! How are you?' And I'm like, 'Oh, hi!' And then I realize, 'Oh, no, they just think they know me because they watched me in a movie.' Which is cool, but definitely not a normal thing.
You know how sometimes you're talking to people who love you and give you unconditional love, and you say, "But you know what? Let me back up. I forgot to say . . ."You can do that, right? You don't hesitate and say, "Oh my God! I forgot to say that!". You just speak! And you say it all, until you have nothing more to say. And that's your first draft. It's done.
I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have made safe for poets. The whole city is so lovely that you do not have to write it up to make it poetry; it is ready-made for you. But, I don't know - the poetry written in that city might not seem like poetry if read outside of the city. It would be like the jokes made when you were drunk; you have to get drunk again to appreciate them.
Personally, I don't go and seek contact with fans, but if they happen to find me somewhere I'll say hello and speak to them for a while.
You know, you get a bad review as a writer, you remember it for 10 years. You get a hundred good reviews, you forget them all. You say hello to a hundred people in the city and it doesn't mean anything to you. One racist comment passes by, and it sticks with you a decade.
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