John Hodgman Quotes

Junipers are generally chosen for the latter purpose, as they can be more readily bent into the desired form; the eyes and tongue are added afterwards, and the representation altogether is really good.

Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

As the tree is bent, so it will grow.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

I liked sculpting better than painting. You have more freedom in sculpting.

Don't make a big to-do about the turkey; brine it, put it in the oven, and don't think about it again.

Teachers, you are the shapers of thought and the molders of sentiment, not of this age and of this generation alone, but of ages and generations to come.

as wax receives its impression from a seal, so the character of human life is shaped by example.

It's so important to work with material you can really mold and milk and create and evolve.

Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.

A week before Thanksgiving, my mother bought the turkey, frozen. Then she froze it some more. Then she let it thaw and cleaned it - and I mean really cleaned it, because nobody wanted a 'dirty bird.' She salt-and-peppered the turkey, buttered, paprika-ed, and nominally stuffed it.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Into a dancer you have grown from the seeds somebody else has sown.

What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.

You have to have a lot of respect for hot dogs. It's completely different from sandwich. First of all, the hot dog is American. Sandwiches are not American. They're different. Second of all, a hot dog is like a pop idol. Hot dogs are cute. It's a pop image - everyone knows what a hot dog is.

Context shapes who you are.

The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now molds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else.

Thanksgiving is the most complicated meal you can think of. Every night, dinner is just pasta. It's just different shapes of pasta.

My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.

The Shadow-maker shapes forever.

Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don’t make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely.