I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I was 21. I just kept plugging away. Determined? Yeah, I think I was.
Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter...
Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awaren...
Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt c...
If I go to a party I don't feel like I have to be in the centre. But I do find myself quite often being placed in that position. Even when I was younger at school, I would be asked to make a speech. I don't remember putting up my hand and all that of...
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's...
Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all jus...
One time I was doing a speech to a group of kids, and just before I get there, I see this little kid crying. I found out they just lost a game, and he was the losing pitcher. I went over there, put my arm around him, and said, 'What are you crying fo...
[last lines] [subtitled version] Michael: Nice one, Dad. Good speech. Well done. But I think you'll have to go now so we can eat our breakfast. Faderen: Of course, of course. Faderen: [to his wife] Coming? Moderen: I'll stay here.
Tevye: As Abraham said, "I am a stranger in a strange land... " Mendel: Moses said that. Tevye: Ah. Well, as King David said, "I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue." Mendel: That was also Moses. Tevye: For a man who was slow of tongue, he talked a...
[delivering his rehearsed speech] Luca Brasi: Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your daughter... 's wedding... on the day of your daughter's wedding. And I hope their first child be a masculine child. I pledge my eve...
Queen Elizabeth: [Using the name "Mrs. Johnson"] My husband is, um... well, he's required to speak publicly. Lionel Logue: Perhaps he should change jobs. Queen Elizabeth: He can't. Lionel Logue: Indentured servitude? Queen Elizabeth: Something of tha...
King George V: In the past, all a King had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse. Now we must invade people's homes and ingratiate ourselves with them. This family's been reduced to those lowest, basest of all creatures. We...
Harvey Milk: [First lines] This is Harvey Milk speaking on Friday November 18th. This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. During one of the early campaigns, I started opening my speeches with the same line and it sort of b...
There wasn't even enough meat to make proper fun of [....] I keep waiting for somebody else to come on TV, maybe a cabinet member, to read the real speech, the one that tells us ... I dunno ... stuff. Seriously, sorority girls have done the Walk of S...
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought ag...
I have a political attitude, but I'm certainly not a politician.
Punctuality is the politeness of kings.
I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.
Polite conversation is rarely either.
The independence of all political and other bother is a happiness.
