All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.
Christopher Hitchens
Related I've always felt heroic about my life... As a child, I remember little girls in the playground m... VIVIENNE WESTWOOD I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a sou... JOAN DIDION If I probably didn't have tattoos, or if I probably didn't bleach my hair, or if I probably ... GUY FIERI I think like a lot of people, you look back on your life and say, 'Gee, why didn't I apply m... TONY DANZA I have a discipline that has served me very well in my career and in my personal life... and that... RYAN REYNOLDS I wasn't a bad kid. My dad left when I was young, so I didn't have much discipline, not that... DANNY DYER I've only gotten directly offered two or three movies, ever. I don't have the luxury of bein... MADELINE ZIMA I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - t... JAMES STOCKDALE I had dropped out of school and was a runaway, so I didn't have family to fall back on if I didn... CARRE OTIS If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and exper... PHILIP GREENSPUN I think I was a bit naive when I was younger. I don't know what it was: I sort of felt tunnel vi... JENNA DEWAN I believe that life is a journey towards God, and that no one has the right to insist that you go a ... PAT BUCKLEY More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't sa... JOHN IRVING I didn't have any writer friends in college. I was a computer science major, but I was writing a... WATT KEY I was offered a series by John Carpenter after I did the movie 'Christine,' and I would'... HARRY DEAN STANTON I always felt like I was kind of an outsider because I didn't have the right things. I didn'... LEAH REMINI Sometimes I felt as a writer I was purging, and it almost hurt to purge to that level. Now it doesn&... JILL SCOTT I may have made my reputation as a general in the Army and I'm very proud of that. But I've ... NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF I loved 'Dirty Sexy Money.' That didn't have a long enough shelf life. I would've li... ZOE MCLELLAN 'Made it as a writer'? I'm still wondering if I've made it as a writer. I've mad... ERIC BROWN I used to do crazy things that people would bail me out of, and I'm just grateful that I survive... ERIC CLAPTON I didn't do school plays... I've never done a play in my life, actually. Not even a nativity... MILLIE BOBBY BROWN If I didn't have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be lo... ANGELINA JOLIE I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just kn... CHINUA ACHEBE I have twins that I didn't want to have the life that I had. I didn't have a great life grow... LEE DANIELS If I wasn't a writer, I would probably be a watchmaker. I like putting puzzles together, and tha... KARIN SLAUGHTER My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn&... TOM WOLFE I don't consider myself a gangsta rapper. But I'm probably more qualified to be a gangsta ra... COOLIO A lot of our tracks have sounded a lot better than I thought they would because of recording, mixing... CHARLIE WATTS I'd rather be a Jack-of-all-trades than master of one. If I became an icon, where my whole life ... DICK DALE I've never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt... TAYLOR SWIFT I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would pro... JANE GREEN And if I would have taken lessons I probably wouldn't have done it, and what forced me to do all... EDDIE VAN HALEN I was discovered out of nowhere. I didn't have family that was in the industry. I didn't kno... BONNIE MCKEE I always wanted to be an actress. And it wasn't ego. I felt so little about myself, considered m... FRANCES BAY I was always with a single mom, and we never had schedules or anything. We were just Bohemian, us ag... BROOKE SHIELDS I'm not as good a singer as I am an actor. So that's why I - the stories I like so much is b... ANDY GRIFFITH I always look back at when I didn't have a dream, when I didn't have a spirit. I didn't ... BOB BEAMON When I was 18, I left Dublin and moved to Paris. I didn't speak French. I didn't know anyone... CAITRIONA BALFE And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that... DAVID BENIOFF One match that really sticks out for me, there's a bunch of matches with all the guys that I wor... BROCK LESNAR It's good to have a foothold in reality, a base somewhere that's always been a base. Sharman... SEAN BIGGERSTAFF I certainly wouldn't say that my life is a disaster, but there have been moments where I've ... DUNCAN SHEIK I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm... MARILYN MANSON I never felt I had anything to hide. I never felt being gay was anything to be ashamed of, so I neve... MARTINA NAVRATILOVA I've discovered as I've grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when... RACHEL MCADAMS 'Miss Jackson' is about something that actually happened to me when I was younger. I hadn... BRENDON URIE I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to... JOAN DIDION Maybe to my own detriment, but I watched all of 'Fargo' probably more than once. And I tend ... ALLISON TOLMAN I didn't want the public in my personal life at all - I thought that people might perceive me as... VANILLA ICE I think of myself more as a filmmaker or as a film person than as strictly just a writer. I don'... PETER GOULD People talk about that catch and, I've said this many times, that I've made better catches t... WILLIE MAYS I've realized how precious life is. When I was younger, I was more adventurous. I felt invincibl... KRISTI YAMAGUCHI I don't think there is really a favorite, I'm very fond of film making as a whole and as a m... PETER CUSHING I don't think there's more than half-a-dozen cartoons that I've been really truly happy ... PAT OLIPHANT When I was growing up, my favorite movie was 'Somewhere in Time' with Christopher Reeve, whi... SCOTT MICHAEL FOSTER I'm a little bit of a weirdo - I'm kind of a loner, I didn't go to college, I spend a lo... ZOSIA MAMET But, clearly to me, what I've come to see is that that happened because I didn't have enough... MONICA LEWINSKY I've been fined probably more than any driver, and I've probably paid it out of my own pocke... KURT BUSCH I played Woodstock in '69, and it really changed my life. Without a doubt, it was the single eve... EDGAR WINTER Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a t... ALEXANDRA ADORNETTO I don't drink coffee. I've never had a cup of coffee in my entire life. That's something... STEVEN SPIELBERG My salvation was a free gift. I didn't have to work for it and it's better than any gold med... BETTY CUTHBERT My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a come... HOWARD SCHULTZ I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. CRAIG GROESCHEL If you go back to the history of the 'Madden' game, I was probably on the cover of it half t... JOHN MADDEN It was part of the reason I almost didn't go public with my diagnosis - I was embarrassed. I fel... ROBIN ROBERTS Math just wasn't my favorite. I didn't get how important math is and how it relates to real ... ADAM RODRIGUEZ I have a romantic conception of the writer's life, and the sort of writer's life that I admi... RACHEL CUSK I've always been really hard on myself. If I didn't book a job, I would cry. BELLA HADID I didn't have a financial need, and I wasn't very gifted at relationships. I probably was mo... CANDICE BERGEN I've always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit try... ARNOLD PALMER I've stammered all my life, and it's fair to say that my stammer has shaped my life. It'... GARETH GATES I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. T... SALLY FIELD Before discovering theater, I was sloughing off and didn't have any passion for school. Then I c... GARY SINISE I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We... MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. I'm getting asked a lot, 'You don't have kids, so how do you know how to act like a moth... WINONA RYDER If I wasn't dyslexic, I probably wouldn't have won the Games. If I had been a better reader,... CAITLYN JENNER Sometimes I make very selfish choices; like I did 'Once Upon A Time' for my inner 8-year-old... GINNIFER GOODWIN I feel like maybe I'm part of that generation that became more of a gamer than a video consumer.... FELICIA DAY I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive di... HOWIE MANDEL All I would say is that when I've been very down or having kind of a tough time in my life, cert... RUPERT FRIEND I went to college a little bit, and that didn't work out, and I didn't finish. So, I would p... CHRIS STAPLETON There was a time when I didn't like myself at all. I thought I was a cruel joke. But now I'v... CEELO GREEN During the holiday season, it's easy to forget that sometimes the best gift of all is simply the... KATE KLISE I've never felt that I was less of an athlete or not accomplished athletically because I didn... MARY DECKER I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think t... NENE LEAKES I've never been around pets. I didn't have pets as a child. IOAN GRUFFUDD First of all, when I was making the decision, I never thought that Pittsburgh fans would want me bac... JAROMIR JAGR I had - all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a... BOB SCHIEFFER I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That ... JOHN IRVING Normally, I've found in my life that the louder you speak, probably, the less of a fighter you a... DAVID DEWHURST I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as i... ALBERT CAMUS I was a bratty little sister. I was the youngest of three, and I often felt as though I didn't f... DOROTHY HAMILL I suddenly realized that the fellow who didn't show up was getting about fifty-times more money ... GLENN FORD Hearing aids didn't cause any problem with my social life, my career, no problem at all, and I... NORM CROSBY I've had a good run. I've built a lot of things that work and a lot of things that didn'... CARROLL SHELBY I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I went t... ELIZABETH STROUT I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher ... LIEV SCHREIBER I didn't know I was a good director, and I mean that sincerely. I had done a film a long time ag... JOHN RIDLEY
More Christopher Hitchens
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CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There's a big difference, as I'm sure you know, it's a slightly manneristic one, between... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Sus... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made u... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion abou... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or t... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven't... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the ha... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert t... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn't even notice. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I don't consider myself to be that credulous. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be te... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms,... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The one unforgivable sin is to be boring CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never ag... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every li... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful becaus... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instea... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatev... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS As I never tire of saying, heat is not the antithesis of light but rather the source of it. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on ut... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate onese... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front f... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in rememb... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn dir... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you di... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indi... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper an... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I vote and I do jury duty. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is ap... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelie... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had�... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I still think like a Marxist in many ways. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I think the materialist conception of history is valid. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itsel... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by bein... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, l... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition’s chief victims are those persons who ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for momen... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A saving grace of the human condition (if I may phrase it like that) is a sense of humor. Many write... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Finally, I want to come to the question of sex. If anything proves that religion is not just man-mad... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, fo... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Believing then … that human life is actually worth living, one can combat one’s natural pessimis... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS How sad to be a woman—not to know Aught of the glory of this breast of snow, All unconcerned to co... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other word... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main pr... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the r... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the sp... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or un... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and re... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John B... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So, whenever the subject of Iraq came up, as it did keep on doing through the Clinton years, I had n... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, bu... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the childre... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The onl... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really no... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adher... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Naz... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS