Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
As quoted in SPIN (1992-01).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print
A collection of quotes on the topic of bother, doing, people, likeness.
Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
As quoted in SPIN (1992-01).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print
“We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place--or not to bother”
Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
“It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
Context: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker
Dita Amory, in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009 - ISBN 978-0-300-14889-3, p. 4
Bonnard started to paint usually on an unstretched canvas
“Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Source: On Being Blonde (2007), p. 52
Context: The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. When they found this out, they would blame me for disillusioning them and fooling them.
Anton LaVey (1930–1997) Founder of the Church of Satan, author of the Satanic Bible
" Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Eleven.html"
“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) late-Romantic Austrian composer
Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician
Sherry, Michael (September 10, 1989). <i>The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon</i>, p. 287 (from "LeMay's interview with Sherry," interview "after the war," p. 408 n. 108). Yale University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0300044140.
John Green book The Fault in Our Stars
A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer
Things I Do For You (credited to "The Jacksons")
Destiny (1977)
Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress
Sukirti on rumours and success http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/sukirti-kandpal-i-dont-care-a-damn-what-people-think/
Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic
As quoted in Rasputin: The Untold Story By Joseph T. Fuhrmann p.100
Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer
"Take no prisoners" http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,220099,00.html, interview by Linda Grant, The Guardian (13 May 2000). <br class="br">About
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
Rolling Stone (1976)
1970s
Context: I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright... Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I... And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.
Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
§ 2
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.
William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer
Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
“those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
“Don't bother to give God instructions; just report for duty.”
Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer
“Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.”
Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Cassandra Clare book City of Bones
Isabelle and Jace, pg. 337
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer
[Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970, ISBN 0-517-50188-0, p.44]
Variant: Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 159
Tom Jones (1940) Welsh singer
Source: "Tom Jones: 'I have a temper that frightens me'" http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-04-28/tom-jones-i-have-a-temper-that-frightens-me, Radio Times, 28 April 2012.
Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor
Speaking on his problems with the paparazzi, as quoted in the National Post (May 2001).
Matthew Perry (actor) (1969) American actor
Newsday staff (September 13, 2002) "START / Fast Chat Matthew Perry", Newsday, Newsday Inc., p. D03.
Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909) German mathematician and physicist
as quoted in a conversation with Max Born about the development of the theory of relativity, by Carl Seelig, Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956)
Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.
Willie Nelson: Road Rules And Deep Thoughts, NPR Staff, NPR.org, National Public Radio, November 18, 2012, November 18, 2012 http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=165223056,
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 267
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Por enquanto, visto que vivemos em sociedade, o único dver dos superiores é reduzirem ao mínimo a sua participação na vida da tribo. Não ler jornais, ou lê-los só para saber o que de pouco importante ou curioso se passa.
[...] O supremo estado honroso para um homem superior é não saber quem é o chefe de Estado do seu país, ou se vive sob monarquia ou sob república.
Toda a sua atitude deve ser colocar-se a alma de modo que a passagem das coisas, dos acontecimentos não o incomode. Se o não fizer terá que se interessar pelos outros, para cuidar de si próprio.
Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)
“A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Letter to Annie Moffett Webster (1 September 1876)
“If living in France bothers some people, they should feel free to leave the country.”
Nicolas Sarkozy (1955) 23rd President of the French Republic
UMP meeting 22 April
Stephen Hawking book The Nature of Space and Time
During a debate with Roger Penrose in 1994 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=LstaQTXP65cC&lpg=PP1&dq=nature%20of%20space%20and%20time&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor
2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)
Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist
"Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist" (February 1995); republished in Facing Up: Science And Its Cultural Adversaries (2001)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Profile in The Independent Magazine (10 March 2007)
2007
Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer
Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 1
Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer
Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: Whenever in my dreams, I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor
Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home.
1990s, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Atlanta (1992)
“The dead won't bother you, it's the living you got to to worry about”
John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer
Robert Ressler interview (1992), seen in John Wayne Gacy: Devil In Disguise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUi-m3Ugo-g
“All of a sudden it didn't bother me not being modern.”
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist
Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot
Referencing Oscar Wilde from the preface of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; "All art is quite useless".
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Context: … but love, like all art, as Oscar said, it's quite useless. It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe but not worth bothering with.
“My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.”
Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian
Source: I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
“When speaking to a Bear of Very Little Brain, remember that long words may bother him.”
A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author
Variant: For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.
Source: Pooh's Little Instruction Book
“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.”
Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending
Source: The Sense of an Ending
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.
“… why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?”
Sören Kierkegaard book Fear and Trembling
Source: Fear and Trembling
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: The Darkest Night
Jeff Lindsay (1952) American playwright and crime novelist Jeffry P. Freundlich
Source: Dexter By Design
Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“I was a loner as a child. I had an imaginary friend - I didn't bother with him.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian