Unwanted Responsibility Quotes

The world knows how reluctantly I accepted this issue of battle forced upon me on my advent to this place [the White House] by the internal enemies of our country.

My shoulders sagged. Really, is it too much to ask that I be able to come home from a long day of work and relax? Oh, no. I have to come home and read a bunch of letters written to the love of my life by his fiancée, who, if I am correct, had him killed a hundred and fifty years ago. Then, as if that is not bad enough, he wants me to explain the Vietnam War.

I never had any interest in politics. I never would have gone into politics except that when my brother died, my father insisted.

I hate when I'm on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.

It's sheer torture. I have to be up with the chickens every day and go to work on my body. I hate it, but I do it.

It is with unwelcome frequency that I find myself the deciding vote.

My sisters were teenagers when I was born, so the last thing they wanted was a little nappy-headed boy running around. I would imitate them or copy things off TV.

Being spokesman for a generation is the worst job I ever had.

I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.

I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn't work out, it's another nightmare for me.

The Vice Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does.

It is literally my job to support and defend the President, so it is odd to me that I am being asked to defend or explain 'comments in support' of my boss.

The role model thing gets imposed on you by someone else. I don't think that's fair.

What's strange is, the people who want to be in the position are never asked to be in the position. Like, if you don't want to do something, then people really want you to do it. And the more you say, "No, really, I'm sorry, it's really not for me," the more they want to convince you that it is, in fact, for you, and that you'd be absolutely perfect.

If I've inadvertently become some sort of role model for failed comedians, then it's really backfired very badly on me.

Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.

I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.

My mom never wanted to be a grandmom. She never wanted to be a mom, really.

If I was roped into a seven-year TV contract I'd probably hang myself.

I was upset with Delbert, because there he was going again and pushing me out in front, without asking me.

When I got pregnant my foot grew, but I was denying it. I've been denying it for three years.

I need this job [Speaker of the House] like a hole in the head.

[These appointments] laid me under the embarrassment of acting thro' men whose views were to defeat mine; or to encounter the odium of putting others in their place.

The hardest part of my entire three-year recovery has been knowing that my parents, my brothers, were suffering through this burden of injury and recovery, something I volunteered for that they didn't ask for.

I didn't want to be president of the World Wildlife Fund. I was asked to do it. I'd much rather have stayed in the navy, frankly.