I have lived the American dream. Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days.
It came right on the heels of A Room With A View. And that was such an enormous success, so I think people were hoping that Maurice would also have that kind of success.
Our development as a people has for many years been overshadowed in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world by the remarkable growth, and achievements of the American Union.
I don't care what you do - baseball or politics - George W. Bush is always going to be compared to his father. I just want it to be an easy answer in 50 years - Who was the better player, me, or my kids? I want it to be my kids.
Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
The guys in the Twins understand that the better Weezer does, the more people will probably care about us.
I do feel like young people feel pressured to be extraordinary in a new way. Of course everybody is extraordinary in their own special way... but not everybody has been an activist, or volunteered somewhere incredible, or has perfect scores. So it's a lot of pressure to put on young people.
Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.
Love has sold more songs than you've had hot dinners.
You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.
We didn't make the mistakes that many other cities did.
While it feels good to be compared to someone like Sridevi, it's also a lot of pressure.
I think the main thing you measure your success by is what you do in comparison to your opposition. If you're in an industry where you're the leader, then you're performing very well.
Success to me is anybody who does something better than somebody else.
It doesn't bother me whether I am or I'm not compared to my dad. I do not feel any pressure at all from being his son.
Even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places.
I found the success of 'In a Dark, Dark Wood' really distracting when I was writing 'The Woman in Cabin 10,' but in a way, the fact that 'Cabin 10' was doing well felt quite freeing while I was writing 'The Lying Game.'
It's tough for a child to deal with expectations that people have if they have a successful parent. A child often fails to cope with the same and constantly tries to find out possible ways to excel - just to live up to the name.
I'd rather have written "Cheers" than anything I've written.
Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.
Obama is like the kid brother whose only standard for judging his own achievements is the records his big brother set.
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
You could do a hundred projects and still not have the fans that are there for Twilight.
Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy.
For the last five years, we have been presented with the idea that Barack Obama is superhuman. Barack Obama is unlike any of us or anyone else. And he isn't. In fact, he's much less achieved and much less accomplished than most who have gotten half as far as he has, and I think maybe what we saw was the best.
