H. T. Leslie Quotes

It should cause no surprise that anyone so lazy as myself should be economical to the point of miserliness with everything he writes.

Any stupid remark, quoted often enough, becomes gospel.

Fred Astaire was a more formal, trained dancer who loved waltzing and only danced with the girls.

I regret not doing a film that I was offered with Clark Gable because the script was not good enough.

I had two children. I had a nanny to manage my kids.

I toured the Middle Eastern countries with the ballet.

James Ivory comes close to the actors for the first rehearsal. He more or less lets you direct yourself and then will only correct you if he finds it incorrect.

You have actresses like Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, who have roles specially written for them.

I was trying to be very at ease in this arrogant person, and very worldly, but something human came into the part. I hate to say that. I wanted to be totally worldly.

When I did small films like Lily and Buenos Vista, everyone thought my career would be ruined.

There were many good actresses in my time like Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, but I was the only dancer.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

Faulkner sat in our living room and read from Light in August. That was incredible.

When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.

I like that people who are not experts can not only understand but get engaged by my work. I like that Joe Paterno can read me. Bill Bradley.

Anybody in the next centuries wanting to know what it was like to be a poet in the middle of the 20th century should read Kaddish.

It is a pledge that senility has not the last say in everything.

Foucault was the one person I met in France that I could talk to. He was a mensch. You know whether you agree with him or not because you know what he is saying.

I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.

We are equally glad and surprised at Winston's return to office. It shows that he was built for success that he should have declined to withdraw and sulk over a superficial failure.

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

If a person begins by telling you, 'Do not be offended at what I am going to say,' prepare yourself for something that she knows will certainly offend you.

I'm happy not knowing. Most of the time (except when I'm a neurotic mess about uncertainty) I feel glad that the horizon is a mystery.

I've been thinking so much about writing as a gift to readers - and how newness of subject (place or topic or person) is one of the biggest gifts at our disposal.

When you're writing a sketch, it has to be surrounded by a situation. It can't just be out of the air.

Many of our problems are blessings in disguise.

I bring a poofy gray down jacket with me wherever I go. It's meant for winter, but I use it most in the summer, when everyone cranks up the air-conditioning.

Things which don't shift and grow are dead things.

I've never proclaimed myself to be a shooter. But I am definitely a scorer.

When I set a goal, I work hard to achieve it.

Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader cant just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.

Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.

Shirley! Don't call me Shirley!

When you see Charlie Chaplin, he stays funny. He doesn't become drama, and so what really seems to endure is comedy.

I like that kind of 'straight-faced' comedy. I like to be straight-faced and outrageous.

Those who the gods seek to destroy first, learn how to play golf.

The actual distance a bad golfer is going to hit the ball with any club obviously depends on many factors, not the least of which is whether the ball was actually hit at all.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

I had always functioned with dignity, wanting to appear intelligent, macho, never vulnerable or insecure. But now I realize that... a part of these comic characters is a fundamental part of me too.

Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.

It's so wrong when I pick up a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and I look at the last page and it doesn't say, Yours truly, at the end.

The honeymoon phase always ends, for everyone.

You ultimately have to find out who you are inside and develop a set of values that are truly yourself, and then express them.

Manu Ginobili is just a baller dude.

I'm probably taller than 90% of the men I meet.

Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills, and to see the world.

I'm really good at standup. I always win at standup.