H. W. Shaw Quotes

Set me anything to do as a task, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.

Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call penal law.

I've always stuck with Gibsons. I've had Guilds and Fenders, too, but I always wind up going back to Gibsons.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

As a solo artist, I just felt cemented in front of the mike stand. There was very little time to play with the audience and be a band member

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

I have always been a sucker for the big, upbeat chorus.

Those who are looking for paradise on Earth should come and see Dubrovnik.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

When you sign with a label, they do insist upon certain rights, and if you have a competent attorney, your rights will be protected.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.

I like being on the road, living in hotels. While I've got a real nice house, I go crazy when I'm there.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals

You can have fun, but you also have to put on your thinking cap every day

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition.

I was born in Alabama and my first live music experiences were in church. Every Sunday we watched regional gospel groups on television singing their hearts out

When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while to keep them.

I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination.

I wrote songs all my life, where anyone wanted to hear them or not.

There's no future in being poor.

The only thing is worrying about sleeping. If I have to be up early I worry about being able to get to sleep.

It sounds very pretentious, but I don't lie. It's too uncomfortable. A lot of people think because you're an actor that makes you a good liar, but one of the things I can't articulate is a bad lie.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

With the exception of capitalism, there is nothing so revolting as revolution.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.

Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

There's so many bigger things in the world. The art world is such a tiny little thing compared to wars and migration crises. It's weird to be self-absorbed in it.

If I don't have a deadline, I could fuss around with stuff for forever.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit

Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave.

We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.

Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.

Being in a state of mystery seems to be my calling.

If I won the lottery,I would love to buy an airfield and populate it with enthusiasts like myself, and old airplanes.