“Because when I was young and I'd get an A on a history test.. or whatever.. I'd get this good feeling about all the things that I could be. And then I never became any of them.”

Last update July 17, 2023. History

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“Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I knew my cousins were getting beaten for things that I'd done, but I wasn't interested in changing my grandmother's perspective, because that would mean I'd get beaten, too. Why would I do that? So that I'd feel better? Being beaten didn't make me feel better. I had a choice. I could champion racial justice in our home, or I could enjoy granny's cookies. I went with the cookies.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 52/53
Born a Crime

“I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I didn't get where I am today by worryin' about how I'd feel tomorrow.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

“I'd say to myself or whoever I was with, 'It'll look good in the biography.' and then I'd go ahead and do whatever daft thing it was - like taking acid on the sacred mesa or doing the bungee-jump, getting the haircut, dancing with the stranger, talking to the crowd - whatever I was 'scared' of mostly, or fancied doing, or never dared before, I'd try it on the basis that it would make for a more interesting read one day.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2004
http://www.popimage.com/content/grant2004.html
On life

“At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn't find any takers so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone. The moment I decided I'd rather be alone and not have anyone telling me their problems, everybody I'd never even seen before in my life started running after me to tell me things I'd just decided I didn't think it was a good idea to hear about. As soon as I became a loner in my own mind, that's when I got what you might call a "following."”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I've found that to be absolutely axiomatic.
Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 1: Puberty

“I'd hate to be a teetotaller. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day.”

Dean Martin (1917–1995) American singer, actor, comedian and film producer

Quoted http://books.google.com/books?id=m-gqAQAAIAAJ&q=%22I'd+hate+to+be+a+teetotaller+Imagine+getting+up+in+the+morning+and+knowing+that's+as+good+as+you-re+going+to+feel+all+day%22&pg=PA276#v=onepage by Leslie Halliwell in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (1984)

“I never set fire to a piano. I'd like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn't any good.”

Jerry Lee Lewis (1935) American singer-songwriter and pianist

As quoted in Esquire (January 2010), p. 89

“Sometimes it gets so that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.”

Mary Renault book The Charioteer

Source: The Charioteer (1953), p. 285
Context: You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets so that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.

“When they asked for those to raise their hands who'd go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it up high as I could get it. I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared — but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) American civil rights activist (October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977)

As quoted in The Crosswinds of Freedom, 1932-1988, p. 636, by James MacGregor Burns (2012)

“Four guys could get together and make their own movie, in a year, but nobody does it 'cause they got bills to pay. What I'm saying is, that's what I would do, if I was young. I wouldn't even get a job. I'd get a couple of computers and a bunch of guys, we'd eat crap for a year, millionaires the next year if we did a good film. It's so extraordinary. Instead of crying about getting a job at Disney or "things are falling apart", things the old animators were doing when I was a kid, "it's all crumbling!" It's not crumbling, you're crumbling! You got these computers that could do this stuff for nothing! What do you do with it? You try to get a job for some asshole studio. It's so dumb.”

Ralph Bakshi (1938) Animator, filmmaker

“Because when I was young and I'd get an A on a history test.. or whatever.. I'd get this good feeling about all the things that I could be. And then I never became any of them.”

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