Robertson Davies Quotes

Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. In the minds of politicians, perhaps more than anywhere, the notion of a million dollars has this accordion-like ability to expand or contract; if they are disposing of it, the million is a pleasing sum, reflecting warmly upon themselves; if somebody else wants it, it becomes a figure of inordinate size, not to be compassed by the rational mind.

Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.

I don't know what that weid fantasy is that makes people go, "Oh, you must have had a great childhood."

The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, 'How much is that?'

I can't picture in my mind three hundred and sixty thousand dollars... When I think of it, all I can see in my mind is a big nickel.

In most cases, when people make more money, they get deeper in debt. This is why money alone does not make you rich.

I've always understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me.

People think that they see, but they don't.

imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people's lives.

To money, the finest linguist in the world!

People are very surprised when they come to Hong Kong after seeing my films, because my version of it is quite different than Hong Kong in reality.

I pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Beethoven was so hard of hearing, he thought he was a painter.

It's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."

There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.

I am really the victim of other people's imagination.

Why was it librarians had such a prim image? With all the information available in books right there at their fingertips, librarians could be the best-informed people around. About anything.

People will say to you, "Oh, you are fearless." That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

I'm frequently introduced as a fashion designer, and I quickly say I'm not, and instantly people are incredibly disappointed and think that I'm some sort of charlatan who's been perpetuating this falsehood.

The difference between us and other people is that their money looks bigger and their troubles smaller.

This is an amazingly sound place. We are more disaster-resistant than most other places. We haven't pushed it as hard as other people would have pushed it. I don't want to go back to Go. I've been to Go. A lot of our shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don't want to go back to Go either.