J. A. Baker Quotes

It's always seemed odd to me that after a group of terrorists commits a vile and odious deed they rush messages to the public to claim credit for it.

I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.

It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.

I don't like the idea of talking down to kids. I think I was talked down to, and you rebel against that.

The French have the reputation of being arrogant. I don't think it's arrogance but a certain authenticity.

A garden is where you can find a whole spectrum of life, birth and death

"Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot."

The Old Testament is my favourite science fantasy reading.

One longs to be funny, to make people laugh. Laughter is such a sign of approval, isn't it?

Loving friends let kindness grow in their hearts, creating a oneness with their souls.

You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

Words had become overnight just little coins, insignificant and unfreighted, to be exchanged for ribbons, buttons, for an apple or an egg.

People often miss things that don't exist--miss things that were but are not anymore.

England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

Sensitive, responsive, eagerly welcomed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature, by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men.

I'm pretty good at gardening. It consumes my time, and it feels like I'm doing something constructive.

We have newsreaders behaving like actors, lowering their voices if it's a sad story, as if we didn't know it's a sad story. There isn't a single cool newsreader.

You can always tell folks from nonfolks. Folks like to feel good, like to smile for the camera when there's a big photo opportunity for a really good cause.

Romantic Orientalism was fascinated by the color and excitement of a powerful culture, and nearly always approached its subject with love.

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

As soon as you get off stage, that's the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.

When you're away for a long time, tastes change, fans move on. You hate to think about it, but it's an ugly fact of life.

I need my career. That's what validates me.

I have as many pictures of my vocal cords as I do of my children. I have a great ear, nose and throat doctor, and we look at them - if there's some redness, maybe I'll take a little time off.

It's impossible to write and produce a record when your parents are dying. I really tried, I really, really tried, but it just wouldn't come.

I'm used to getting up at 7, getting breakfast, getting the kids off to school, and doing the mommy thing and the wife thing and the daughter thing.

Chris Brown is brilliant. That cat is crazy brilliant, and I wish him the best.

I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.

There are certain early plays of mine that I really don't like, but I can't imagine going back and fixing them. I would be totally incapable of it. I'm not in the head of the characters anymore.

If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.

Writing is my primary way of expressing myself.

Though we live amid promiscuous pressures, spiritual clutter and forgetfulness, we probably still value the integrity of life.

I never want to feel constrained by writing a novel for a specific audience.

I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.

I was well aware of the fact that once you appeared in Doctor Who as something else, you were ruled out for the part of the Doctor: that was a kind of well known thing in the business.

I never turn down scripts without good reason. If I did, I would probably never work.

I take every job on its merits.

I'm perfectly proud of the work I did, looking back at it. I know I've had a bit of a revision since my 'Big Finish' stories came out.

I hope I'm always convincing when I act!

Actors love to act all those death scenes.

It was lovely to do The Knock because I haven't done anything really significant since Doctor Who.

If we use less, if we consume less, we're going to have more

I do remember reading the script of 'The Nightmare Fair' and looking forward to doing it.

I've mellowed quite quickly.

The standard of writing that I'm getting now from 'Big Finish' compares very favourably with some of the stuff I was doing on screen in the '80s.

How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.