Quotes about bit
page 12

Robin Williams photo

“The sound crapped out for a bit, that's why I'm using SupposiSound! No one wants their tapes back, I wonder why.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Valerie Jarrett photo

“Michelle was so mature beyond her years, so thoughtful and perceptive. She really prodded me about what the job would be like because she had lots of choices. I offered it to her on the spot, which was totally inappropriate because I should have talked to the mayor first. But I just knew she was really special.
Barack never grills. That's part of what is so effective about him: He puts you completely at ease, and the next thing you know he's asking more and more probing questions and gets you to open up and reflect a little bit. That night we talked about his childhood compared to my childhood and realized we both had rather…unusual childhoods.
Married in 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said. He was a physician. He passed away. I want to say in about 1991.
We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be.
I have to tell you: My daughter is in seventh heaven about me being in Vogue. Nothing else I have done has fazed her at all. But this! She's like, 'Oh, Mom. You don't understand. This is really big.'
I have never heard him yell, Ever. Not once in seventeen years. He's not a yeller.
Because my dad worked at the university, he could swing by and take Laura to school and pick her up from her first day of nursery school until the day she graduated from high school. They would often have breakfast and have these wonderful conversations.”

Valerie Jarrett (1956) Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, civic leader; senior advisor to U.S. Senator Barack Obama

September 2008 interview with Vogue https://web.archive.org/web/20080930190831/http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2008_Oct_Valerie_Jarrett//

Carl Sagan photo

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.”

Cosmos (2011 ebook edition)
Carl Sagan
Random House
2011
July
http://books.google.com/books?id=EIqoiww1r9sC&pg=PT312&dq=%22Not+all+bits+have+equal+value%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yHThUrX4Ns-xoQSIr4DoCQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Not%20all%20bits%20have%20equal%20value%22&f=false;

Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Ken Ham photo
Robert A. Dahl photo
Goran Višnjić photo
Wilt Chamberlain photo
Francesco Filippini photo

“… worked a lot but sold a little bit that despite having sent all over Europe, fruitlessly or almost …”

Francesco Filippini (1853–1895) Italian impressionist painter

Venice, 1893
…lavorato molto ma venduto men che poco pur avendo mandato per tutta Europa, infruttuosamente o quasi… (Venezia, 1893).
Francesco Filippini, Francesco Filippini il dossier di uno splendido pittore https://www.stilearte.it/francesco-filippini-il-dossier-uno-splendido-pittore-morto-a-42-anni-di-tisi/, Stilarte.it, November 4, 2015.

Väinö Linna photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Ron Paul photo
Nicole Krauss photo
Adyashanti photo
Sarah Palin photo
John Ashcroft photo
Jonathan Swift photo
John E. Sununu photo
John Dean photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

John Banville photo
Chris Rea photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Morrissey photo
Neal Boortz photo

“Politics? I'm a confirmed Libertarian. I believe that the principal difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats just want to grow our Imperial Federal Government a bit faster than the Republicans do.”

Neal Boortz (1945) American author, journalist, and radio host

Source: "Neal Boortz - Libertarian", [http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities.html Libertarian Celebrities & VIPs http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/neal-boortz.html,, Advocates for Self-Government, 2006-09-08, http://web.archive.org/20030719050508/www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/neal-boortz.html, 2003-07-19]

Mart Laar photo
Colette photo
Alphonse Daudet photo

“It is clever the way death reaps and gathers its harvests, but what somber harvests. Whole generations do not fall at once; that would be too sad, too visible. But bit by bit. The meadow is attacked on several sides at the same time. One day, one will go; the other, some time after; one must reflect, glance about oneself to notice the empty spaces, the vast contemporary killing.”

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist

Habile façon dont la mort fauche, fait ses coupes, mais seulement des coupes sombres. Les générations ne tombent pas d'un coup; ce serait trop triste, trop visible. Par bribes. Le pré attaqué de plusieurs côtés à la fois. Un jour, l'un; l'autre, quelque temps après; il faut de la réflexion, un regard autour de soi pour se rendre compte du vide fait, de la vaste tuerie contemporaine.
La doulou: (la douleur), 1887-1895 (Paris: Librairie de France, 1930) p. 29; Milton Garver (trans.) Suffering, 1887-1895 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) pp. 29-30.

Bill Bryson photo
Cat Stevens photo

“If I laugh just a little bit
Maybe I can forget the chance
That I didn’t have to know you
And live in peace, in peace”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

If I Laugh
Song lyrics, Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“I'm not afraid of death myself, because I'm not gonna know I'm dead. I'm awed a bit by the idea, but I'm perfectly reconciled to it. Certainly I am, as everyone is, reconciled to everyone else's death but their own. They think an exception can be made in their own case.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

As quoted in "Christmas with Christopher Hitchens", by Gregg LaGambina, The A.V. Club (20 December 2007) http://www.avclub.com/article/christmas-with-christopher-hitchens-14189
2000s, 2007

Sid Vicious photo

“American audiences are just the same as anybody else. Except a bit more boring.”

Sid Vicious (1957–1979) English bassist and vocalist

Reported in Julien Temple, The Filth and the Fury: The Sex Pistols (2000), p. 207.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Irvine Welsh photo
Charlie Brooker photo

“God has far better things to do than creating self-important little species such as ours. He's got wars, deaths, disasters and diseases to ignore for starters. And a fair bit of not-exist-ing-at-all to be getting on with.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 4 December 2006, When it comes to psychics, my stance is hardcore: they must die alone in windowless cells http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1963337,00.html
Guardian columns

Barrett Brown photo

“I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

True/Slant, "The Weekly Standard, Ethan Epstein, and Jesus" http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/07/18/the-weekly-standard-ethan-epstein-and-jesus/, 18 July 2010.

“In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 3, In-Formation, The roots of the concept, p. 18

Clifford D. Simak photo
Neal D. Barnard photo
John Fante photo
Ian Holloway photo

“In football you need to have everything in your cake mix to make the cake taste right. One little bit of ingredient that Tony uses in his cake gets talked about all the time is Rory’s throw. Call that cinnamon and he’s got a cinnamon flavoured cake. It’s not fair and it’s not right and it’s only a small part of what he does.”

Ian Holloway (1963) English association football player and manager

On Tony Pulis's style of management. Mirror Football, 10 December 2010
Holloway uses bizarre cake analogy for Pulis' Stoke style, Mirror Football, 2010-12-11, Jeremy, Butler, 2010-12-10 http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Stoke-v-Blackpool-Ian-Holloway-blasts-critics-of-Tony-Pulis-style-by-using-a-bizarre-cake-analogy-article648761.html,
Sourced quotes

Mohammad Emami-Kashani photo

“If you [Americans] behave with disrespect – even just a little bit – [the Iranian people] will punch you in the mouth so hard that all your devouring teeth will fall off.”

Mohammad Emami-Kashani (1937) Iranian politician

Tehran Friday Sermon: Iranians Will Punch Americans in the Mouth So Hard All Their Devouring Teeth Will Fall Out http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/519.htm, video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YqiXFbA8r4, January 2005.
Iranians to punch Americans

“I did, and still do, think that New Classical Economics has quite a bit in common with the Austrians (so did Robert Lucas, and I am surprised to find that I did not refer to this in the early 1980s, so I was either careless or did not know about it until a bit later).”

David Laidler (1938) Canadian economist

"The 1974 Hayek–Myrdal Nobel Prize", in Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part 1 Influences from Mises to Bartley edited by Robert Leeson (2013)

Edward Snowden photo
Robert Fisk photo
Desmond Tutu photo
Frank Stella photo

“I hate to say this... it's made to order. Then, I disorder it a little bit or, I should say, I reorder it. I wouldn't be so presumptuous to claim that I had the ability to disorder it. I wish I did.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 28.

Nicholas Carr photo
Tommy Lee Jones photo
Margaret Atwood photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
Nakayama Miki photo
Andrew Motion photo

“Well, there it is. I think you can pass your verdict as well as I can. My verdict is that it is a little bit of a regression to childhood, but after all, why not?”

Hans Keller (1919–1985) Austrian-British musician and writer

Hans Keller, discussing the then-new group Pink Floyd, The Look of the Week, BBC TV, May 1967.

Jimmy Wales photo

“It’s clear that the Democratic Party believes a radical left candidate is their best chance to win the White House this year. Hillary’s just a little bit too sane. Under the bus with her.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

May 31, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30149_The_First_Notes_of_Hillarys_Swan_Song&only

Neil Diamond photo
Anthony Stewart Head photo

“I had to groan a bit on the couch when my brow was mopped—as it is when you've been shot across the chest.”

Anthony Stewart Head (1954) English actor

Anthony Stewart Head at Toronto Trek, July 12, 2003.

Matthew Good photo

“You will definitely not survive this next bit.”

Matthew Good (1971) Canadian singer-songwriter

At Last There is Nothing Left to Say

Dashiell Hammett photo

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Joseph Campbell photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Willem de Kooning photo
Massimo Pigliucci photo
Koila Nailatikau photo

“For all I know this has come very late in the day and it's a bit too late … Had my father been here, I believe he would have respected and upheld the rule of law.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

7 May 2005
On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 7 May, 2005

“Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Muhammad Yunus photo
Eric Holder photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Arsène Wenger photo

“You forget what you wrote last September, October, November. You have a little bit of Alzheimer's.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

Aston Villa 0-0 Arsenal (24 November 2011) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2237791/Aston-Villa-0-Arsenal-0--Match-report.html
Interviews

Quentin Crisp photo

“Bit by bit, I was becoming the almost acceptable face of homosexuality.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

Source: How to Become a Virgin (1981), Ch. 6

Sienna Guillory photo
Stella Vine photo
Daniel Handler photo
Imelda Marcos photo

“It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Bagpipe Music", line 9, from The Earth Compels (1938)

Britney Spears photo

“Carlson: Give me the chronology of the kiss. How did you decide to kiss Madonna?
Spears: Well, actually, in rehearsals, it wasn't something that was like, "Y'know, This is what we're gonna do. Y'know." It was just kinda like we play around a little bit and, um, she said during—before the performance, "Let's just feel it out and see what happens."”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

So I didn't know it was gonna be that long and everything, but it was cool.
CNN interview with Tucker Carlson http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/ (3 September 2003)

Jodi Benson photo
David Graeber photo
Alan Moore photo
Louis C.K. photo
Alyssa Milano photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Farhad Manjoo photo

“It's easy to rib Microsoft for copying Apple, and seeing the two stores side by side does make Team Redmond look a bit pathetic. But in business, losing face isn't as important as making money. And after visiting a couple Microsoft stores, I'm convinced they'll help Microsoft bring in more cash.”

Farhad Manjoo (1978) American journalist

Welcome to the Microsoft Store http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/04/microsoft_store_it_s_a_blatant_rip_off_of_the_apple_store_and_it_just_might_save_the_company_.html in Slate (25 April 2012)

Marsden Hartley photo
Jean Dubuffet photo
Mark Rowlands photo
Nicole Kidman photo

“I have a little bit of a belly, a tiny bit of pooch. It's the one thing I don't want to lose. I just like having some softness. If I lose that, then Tom might leave me.”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

Dame Magazine http://www.damemagazine.com/entertainment/f384/TheWitandWisdomofNicoleKidman.php