Stuff About Things #13

"I'm very grateful.... I'm very happy. It is life changing. If it's not, there's something wrong with you.... The moment that baby's born you're like, okay, hey, it's not about me anymore. Which is kind of a relief I think.... Having a family is crazy, it's bigger than any movie, but having a son is like winning an Oscar every morning, when I hear him, man, I am a father."
     — Tom Arnold, with Bear Grylls

"It's about expectations. My wife, that's why she loves me, her expectations are so low."
     — Tom Arnold

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
     — Maya Angelou

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched."
     — Helen Keller

"Our legacy isn’t what we write on our resume or how many commas we have in our bank account. It’s who we’re lucky enough to have in our lives and what we can leave them with. The one thing we do know, we’re here now. So I say we do the best we can, while we're on this side of the dirt, and that’s what I think about my legacy."
     — Henry, the Book of Henry 

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
     — Hellen Keller

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
     — Mike Tyson

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."
     — Leonardo Da Vinci

"Remember, Babe Ruth was not only the home run king, he was also the strikeout king."
     — Steve Case, entrepreneur, co-founder of America Online

"No one is qualified to tell you how you experience the world."
     — Vlad Zamfir

"Do your thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece."
     — Ralph Charell

"You learn the secret of this business, which is there's no secret. Be yourself."
     — Larry King

"'There was an energy surrounding (John Travolta on the set of Grease) unlike anything I had ever experienced,' says Dinah Manoff. 'It wasn't even lusting. It was being in the presence of something epic. I had never been around charisma that was at its peak that way. I cannot describe it to you. There is no other movie star I have been around who carried around the energy he did in those days.' Travolta had already wrapped Saturday Night Fever, which would be released that December. He asked some of the cast if they'd watch a preview. 'I don't know if it's any good,' he told them. 'I wish you guys would tell me.' 'And he meant it - he had no idea how good it was,' says Didi Conn, who attended the screening. 'We flipped out. We said, are you kidding?! It was part of this explosion around him.' Travolta was actually still coping with the loss of his great love, the actress Diana Hyland, who had died in his arms that spring, losing her battle with cancer."
     — Vanity Fair magazine

"People with a vested interest in a certain kind of philosophy find it almost impossible to accept facts that go against that particular philosophy."
     — Aldous Huxley

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
     — F. Scott Fitzgerald

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
     — Albert Einstein

"There's a lot of fear associated with being tough."
     — Jonathan Banks

"In a real sense, to grow in life, I must be a seeker of stress."
     — Dr. Jim Loehr

"Never let a good crisis go to waste. It's the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential."
     — Kristen Ulmer

"Fear is a friend of exceptional people."
     — Cus D'Amato

"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."
     — Elbert Hubbard

"Every single person, pretty much, is taught what they're supposed to do: go to school, get a job, find someone to love, get married, have kids, raise the kids, and then die. Nobody questions that. What if you want to do something different? ... I don't think you can describe your ideal girl. A big part of that is just meeting someone and really clicking and wanting to hang out with them all of the time.... You go to any Jay-Z concert, and he plays his hits. Comedians don't have hits. You have to have a whole brand-new hour. You have no hits to rely on. It's the hardest thing.... I like to eat.... One of the big things I miss about New York is not my friends so much; it's Shake Shack.... It's hard to get really excited about movies. Think about it like this: How many good comedy movies come out a year? Maybe one or two? And then, in those movies, what are the chances there's a character that I'm the best fit to play? It's really small.... I was a dishwasher at one of those Japanese places that cook on your table. Not too fun.... Even in my stand-up, there's a lot more positivity and enthusiasm rather than negative, I-hate-everything vibes.... You can't call anybody anymore. If you try to call someone they're like 'What? Are you on fire? Then quite wasting my time, text me that shit!'"
     — Aziz Ansari, comedian  

"Humor is the highest form of intelligence."
     — I don't know who said this, maybe no one, but I think it's true; Oscar Wilde said something similar about sarcasm, and I do love the Irish literary giants like Wilde, Joyce, and Yeats...