Bel Kaufman Quotes

If I'm cussing at you, swearing at you, calling you demeaning names, are you really thinking about that last play? Am I really helping you get better? Or am I just making myself feel good by demeaning you? I've really never understood it.

I was always shouted at by my teacher because I would draw straight on the table in the school.

I was bought an electric guitar when I was 12, but my guitar teacher beat me up. I didn't like guitar lessons and I got quite bored. My teacher was obviously bored giving me lessons, and one day I offered him a liquorice toffee, but he didn't answer. So I threw it at him, it hit him in the face, and he sort of beat me up.

My teacher said my brain was the size of a pea. He made my life miserable by singling me out in the classroom as a failure.

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

There is a sort of backlash of people who feel like you're not representing them accurately, and you want to say as elegantly as you can, "I wasn't trying to represent you I, was just doing what I could do to make being alive easier for me." And if it helped anyone or made them feel comforted in the process then it's the greatest thing you can ask for.

It drives me crazy when people say, "All we're trying to do is create entertainment." I feel like people go to movies for more than that.

I was bullied by my siblings and cousins, so make-believe was a way in which I could be in charge. When I was like 10 and my sister was about five, I convinced her that she was going to jail because she used a bad word. The doorbell happened to ring, and I told her it was the police. I made her pack her bags. She was crying, and then I said to her, "I forgive you, and I'm gonna tell the cop to go away." Then, of course, she loved me. It was terrible - she still remembers it. I had a sordid sense of humor.

I read one thing, and 100 people can say good things then you read one bad thing that says you're the worst and you believe them.

I find it incredibly boring when people are mean about some individuals, especially if the individual has no power. I can understand how someone deems it necessary if somebody is in power to tear them down - I think that's really crucial. I make a lot of mean jokes about myself; as a theme, suffering seems to me a very interesting thing for comedy, but not the suffering of a particular individual.

There is nothing more startling in human relations that the strong emotion of weak people.

You're trying your damndest, you strike out and they boo you. I act like it doesn't bother me, like I don't hear anything the fans say, but the truth is I hear every word of it and it kills me.

I find that truly heartbreaking that, like, it's such a common, constant thing in people's lives - a brutal abuse of people by other people, and it's just accepted.

As a director, you try to do things that are going to touch the human experience somehow, and emotions that mean something to people. You search for those projects and you hope to realize the potential in a project.

Maybe it was my revenge on people who had been unkind to me as a child. But it was very easy and a thrill to freeze up children.

Why should we stop living because some people try to kill what is left of energy in ourselves?

None of us grew up feeling like winners. So thank you to the bullies, to the popular kids, to the gym teachers who taunted us, who rejected us and who made fun of the way we ran. Without you we never would have gone into comedy.

He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe," Joanna Hoffman said. "It's a common trait in people who are charismatic and know how to manipulate people. Knowing that he can crush you makes you feel weakened and eager for his approval, so then he can elevate you and put you on a pedestal and own you.

Now, I've always known that there were bullies in the world. We've seen a lot of it in politics lately as well as in daily life. You see it where people who may be stronger, or bigger, or better with verbiage than other folks... show off. To me, that's what bullying is, showing off. It's saying, I'm better than you, I can take you down. Not just physically, but emotionally.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

That's so difficult, to try to deal with every hater. I don't expect people to like my music whatsoever. How I deal with it is, I don't give them fuel.

One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.

When you're fat, the world is divided into two groups - people who bug you and people who leave you alone. The funny thing is, supporters and saboteurs exist in either camp.