William McDonough Quotes

I really try to write as an ordinary person would, not as someone who's too sophisticated about food, or too knowledgeable about things.

Never try to have the last word. You might get it.

This is not a movie about smelling the urine! It's another kind of movie." Volker Schlöndorff got Billy Wilder to agree to these conversations - you can buy it - because Volker spoke German at times. And he said to Billy Wilder: "What is in your mind?" And he said: "If you're going to try to tell the truth to the audience, you'd better be funny or they'll kill you." And I haven't forgotten that.

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.

The first mistake is trying to explain morality to a terrorist. Like trying to teach a rock to drive. It is impossible.

I try to eliminate as much dialogue as possible, and I guess Rambo is my really best experiment with how to eliminate dialogue.

As an investigative reporter, I'm trying to uncover things and expose them to create a dialogue.

When I'm sculpting, I work with wood and clay, and though some say that an image is already in the material and the sculptor just has to discover it, I also believe you have an image in your head that you're trying to get to. So you're in a dialogue with the piece, a back-and-forth.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

We spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives.

I try to be available for life to happen to me. We're in this life, and if you're not available, the sort of ordinary time goes past and you didn’t live it. But if you're available, life gets huge. You're really living it.

We're going to start with small, easy things; then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.

Of course, you've got to reckon with the burden of the past. You can't just easily dismiss it. It is a legacy and often you have to carry an albatross. And it won't happen until people are able to have a certain level of trust and try to speak to each other, not as caricatures but as people.

I'm not a political progressive, but I consider myself a progressive person. What makes me a progressive, in my opinion, is the fact that I try to improve myself and by large improve the world that I'm in - in the smallest way possible.

Trying to execute that kind of intricate staging in the West Wing at the same time you're doing intricate dialogue - it's like patting your head and rubbing your stomach!

For those saying they live in fear, again, I think they should be part of the conversation. They should reach out and try to not be so presumptively accusatory, frankly, or presumptively negative towards the president-elect, and instead try to build that trusting relationship and try to, frankly, explain their case to him and to his advisers.

[Having monologue] are talking to somebody even if it's just to yourself, convince yourself if that's what you're trying to do.

I used to try and take things in leaps and bounds. Now I've realized it's got to be step by step.

We'll continue to speak out in a respectful way; never challenging somebody's love for America when you criticize their strategies or their point of view.

You don’t try to build a wall, you don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there… You say ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ And you do that every single day and soon you have a wall.

A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words.

If you were to try and pick him out of a group of boys, you’d be wrong. He’d be the other one. Over at the side. The one your eye slipped over.

I have to go with what I do, and what I do has more to do with what people say to each other than telling a story through images. Of course, you're trying to do both. And there are some people who are brilliant at it, but I don't consider myself to be particularly good at it. My mind gets into a verbal mode.

Consistency is something you can always improve on. You can be more consistent with your mental approach, the things you do physically on the mound. Instead of doing 5 good pitches an inning, try to make six. You can always do more of what you are doing well and try to be as consistent as you can be.

The United States is like the Titanic, and I'm here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States.