Lily Tomlin: Want

Lily Tomlin is American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. Explore interesting quotes on want.
Lily Tomlin: 116   quotes 2   likes

“When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.”

Lily Tomlin

Variant: I always wanted to be something, but now I see I should have been more specific.

Funny

“Nobody is here without a reason. … I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.”

Lily Tomlin

Metro Weekly interview (2006)
Context: It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today, especially with the advent of political incorrectness, which is a license to be as ridiculing and awful about certain groups... There should be room for everybody, absolutely, and then the culture is going to decide the prevailing weight. We can't decide it individually. Nobody is here without a reason. … I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

“Some journalists are just motivated by their own sense of what they want to say or what they feel comfortable saying or writing about. In '77, I was on the cover of Time. The same week I had a big story in Newsweek. In one of the magazines it says I live alone, and the other magazine said I live with Jane Wagner. Unless you were so really adamantly out, and had made some declaration at some press conference, people back then didn't write about your relationship.”

Lily Tomlin

Metro Weekly interview (2006)

People , Feeling , Motivation , Sense

“Wouldn't it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.”

Lily Tomlin

Saturday Night Live (1975)

World

“I swear people don't want sex so much as they want somebody who'll listen to 'em … the first thing you learn after fellatio is how to listen.”

Lily Tomlin

Contributions of Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

People , Sex , Learning

“The point I want to make is, the idea that people will say — out of the 170,000 people or however many were killed in the tsunami — they'll say, "God saved me." As if God particularly saved this person. There's a tremendous amount of narcissism in that belief, that God is speaking directly to you. I mean, it's unbelievable. … All these disparate opinions and points of view that people say they're getting as direct divine guidance — I've been concerned for decades about presidents who claim to be born again. And knowing that everyone I knew in the fundamentalist church or in the evangelical Christian church — they wanted the rapture to come. … We don't have to save the environment, because we're not going to be around.”

Lily Tomlin

The Advocate interview (2005)

God , People , Idea , Personality

“People think there's some real subversive thing playing against whoever it is; a lot of it is just people who want to go along and get along. And they also want to make money. And the bottom line is, they're going to put out as much stuff as they can — stupid, banal stuff that makes money.”

Lily Tomlin

The Advocate interview (2005)

Money , People , Stupidity , Thinking

“All my life, I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.”

Lily Tomlin

As "Chrissy"
Contributions of Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

Life

“Some journalists are just motivated by their own sense of what they want to say or what they feel comfortable saying or writing about. In '77, I was on the cover of Time.”

Lily Tomlin

The same week I had a big story in Newsweek. In one of the magazines it says I live alone, and the other magazine said I live with Jane Wagner. Unless you were so really adamantly out, and had made some declaration at some press conference, people back then didn't write about your relationship.
Metro Weekly interview (2006)

Motivation , Time , Feeling , Sense