Directors Famous Quotes

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If you’ve ever wondered why some writers who, in your humble opinion, don’t write as well as you do yet are rich and famous while you struggle onward, this is the reason. They are great directors.
Larry Brooks
The director mentions the whispers about Clifton's sexual orientation, a supposed gig on a porn site years ago, a rumor about a very famous actor and a tryst in Santa Barbara and Clifton's denial in a Rolling Stone cover story about the very famous actor's new movie which Clifton had a small part in: 'We're so into girls it's ridiculous.
Bret Easton Ellis (Imperial Bedrooms)
I was going to be a famous writer, author, auteur, musician, actor, director…. I ended up being a beautiful fool.
Nicholas Tanek (The Coolest Way to Kill Yourself)
physicians, Drs. Bill Castelli, Bill Roberts and Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., that in their long careers they had never seen a heart disease fatality among their patients who had blood cholesterol levels below 150 mg/dL. Dr. Castelli was the long-time director of the famous Framingham Heart Study of NIH; Dr. Esselstyn was a renowned surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic who did a remarkable study reversing heart disease (chapter five); Dr. Roberts has long been editor of the prestigious medical journal Cardiology. BLOOD CHOLESTEROL AND DIET
T. Colin Campbell (The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health)
Louis theorized that arranging a competition for arrogant filmmakers to win medals was the best way to keep them in line.
Stephen Schochet (Hollywood Stories: a Book about Celebrities, Movie Stars, Gossip, Directors, Famous People, History, and more!)
Naw, rudeness is for amateurs. I prefer going right from polite conversation to extreme violence.
Stephen Schochet (Hollywood Stories: a Book about Celebrities, Movie Stars, Gossip, Directors, Famous People, History, and more!)
When you become a famous director someday, will you make sure the coffee cups actually have liquid in them when actors hold them in scenes?
Colleen Hoover (Regretting You)
Dr. Julian Huxley, famous English biologist and director of UNESCO, recently stated that Western scientists should “learn the Oriental techniques” for entering the trance state and for control of breathing. “What happens? How is it possible?” he said. An Associated Press dispatch from London, dated Aug. 21, 1948, reported: “Dr. Huxley told the new World Federation for Mental Health it might well look into the mystic lore of the East. If this lore could be investigated scientifically, he advised mental specialists, ‘then I think an immense step forward could be made in your field.
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship))
A famous case involved U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who purchased 156 acres of wild chaparral but wanted to build five mansions on it. Needless to say there was going to be a significant disruption of the fragile habitat, and his building plans were rejected. The executive director of the Coastal Commission called it “one of the three worst projects that I’ve seen in terms of environmental devastation.
Greg Graffin (Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence)
During one of his activities as director of Chicago’s annual Polish Constitution Day Parade, Gacy met and was photographed with the then First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, on May 6, 1978. The famous photograph even has her autograph, an embarrassing reminder to the Secret Service – who gave special clearance to Gacy – that they still had a bit to learn, once they found out who and what John Wayne Gacy truly was.
Tyler Crane (John Wayne Gacy: The True Crime Story of the Killer Clown (Serial Killers, True Crime))
At the Minsk tractor factory I was looking for a woman who had served in the army as a sniper. She had been a famous sniper. The newspapers from the front had written about her more than once. Her Moscow girlfriends gave me her home phone number, but it was old. And the last name I had noted down was her maiden name. I went to the factory where I knew she worked in the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the factory and the head of the personnel department): “Aren’t there enough men? What do you need these women’s stories for? Women’s fantasies…” The men were afraid that women would tell about some wrong sort of war. I visited a family…Both husband and wife had fought. They met at the front and got married there: “We celebrated our wedding in the trench. Before the battle. I made a white dress for myself out of a German parachute.” He had been a machine gunner, she a radio operator. The man immediately sent his wife to the kitchen: “Prepare something for us.” The kettle was already boiling, and the sandwiches were served, she sat down with us, but the husband immediately got her to her feet again: “Where are the strawberries? Where are our treats from the country?” After my repeated requests, he reluctantly relinquished his place, saying: “Tell it the way I taught you. Without tears and women’s trifles: how you wanted to be beautiful, how you wept when they cut off your braid.” Later she whispered to me: “He studied The History of the Great Patriotic War with me all last night. He was afraid for me. And now he’s worried I won’t remember right. Not the way I should.” That happened more than once, in more than one house.
Svetlana Alexievich (War's Unwomanly Face)
Don Chrisantos Michael Wanzala "Don CM Wanzala" (born April 13), popularly known as Don Santo (stylized as DON SANTO) is a Kenyan singer, rapper, songwriter, arranger, actor, author, content producer, Photo-Videographer, Creative Director (Blame It On Don), entrepreneur, record executive and Leader of the Klassik Nation and chairman and president of Global Media Ltd, based in Nairobi City in Kenya. ​ The genius of DON SANTO rests in his willingness to break from traditional formula and constantly push the envelope. He flips the method of the moment with undeniable swagger and bold African sensibility. As a songwriter, Santo revisits simple, but profound aspects of the human experience – love, lust, desire, joy, and pain that define classical art and drama. He applies his concept to rich, full vocals that exude his intended effect. It is this uncanny ability to compose classics and deliver electrifying live performances that define everything that is essential DON SANTO. In 2015, Santo won the East Africa Music Awards in the Artist of the year Category while his song "Sina Makosa" won the Song of The year. A believer in GOD, FAMILY & GOOD LIFE (Klassikanity).
Don Santo
Cinematographer.” Such an ornate term, yet still so vague. I often wonder if that’s to blame for how overlooked we are as a profession. Or even worse, that dry title, “Director of Photography.” But we are the true artists. A director may quite literally call the shots, but it is the cinematographer that makes them. We choose the angles, the lighting, pretty much everything that you see on the screen. The camera is a brush, and we are the hand, the arm, the eye. The director’s basically just the mouth, making pointless noise while the hand does the actual work. Almost every famous director that you know who has a distinctive visual style has simply managed to lock down a talented DoP.
Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives: Season 3 (Magnus Archives, #3))
Coincidentally the couple who had endowed it had lived in her parents’ building. They had had an eight-year-old with a pretty singing voice who drowned at a Maine summer camp. “You can’t imagine what happened,” said Sarah, but of course Rebecca could imagine. Being a boy soprano had a shorter shelf life than being a supermodel. She could almost see it as Sarah went on and on, the boy with the pale blue eyes, insensible to the hormones coursing through his body as he stood on the stage at Alice Tully Hall. Apparently his choir director had chosen “Old Man River,” sung not in the bass range made famous by Paul Robeson, or in the dialect in which it had been written, but in a high register with crisp consonants. (To be fair to the choir director, he had never
Anna Quindlen (Still Life with Bread Crumbs)
11. Never give up on yourself Everyone may give up on you but never give up on yourself, because if you do, it will also become the end. Believe that anything can be achieved with effort. Most important of all, we must understand that dyslexia is not just a hindrance to learning; it may also be considered a gift. Multiple studies have proven that dyslexic people are highly creative and intuitive. Not to mention the long list of dyslexic people who have succeeded in their chosen fields; Known scientist and the inventor of telephone, Alexander Graham Bell; The inventor of telescope, Galileo Galilei; Painter and polymath, Leonardo da Vinci; Mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll; American journalist, Anderson Cooper; Famous actor, Tom Cruise; Director of our all time favorites Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg; Musician Paul Frappier; Entrepreneur and Apple founder, Steve Jobs; and maybe the person who is reading this book right now. We must always remember, everything can be learned and anyone can learn how to read!  
Craig Donovan (Dyslexia: For Beginners - Dyslexia Cure and Solutions - Dyslexia Advantage (Dyslexic Advantage - Dyslexia Treatment - Dyslexia Therapy Book 1))
There are tiny mites living in our eyelashes. Hal Roach was a famous director who used to hire drunk and insane people to generate creative ideas. To attract female goats, Billy goats urinate on their own heads. Jewish people do not eat pork. Khazaria was a medieval Turkic kingdom that adopted Judaism as its official religion; it was the only non-Semitic state to become Jewish after Israel. The largest economy in the United States is California. More deer are killed by drivers than by hunters. The automotive center of the world is in Detroit. If the earth were ever to stop spinning, all the oceans would flow to the north and south poles. Around 16 to 20 percent of the terms searched on Google are said to have been never searched before. Bamboo can grow 35 inches per day making it the fastest growing woody plant in the world. The heaviest insect found on the earth is ‘Giant Weta’. It weighs more than a pound and is found in New Zealand. The CIA is expected to release the JFK assassination records to the public no later than 10/26/2017.
Nazar Shevchenko (Random Facts: 1869 Facts To Make You Want To Learn More)
As Reagan’s first budget director, Stockman, a former two-term congressman from Michigan, was the point man for the supply-side economics the new administration was pushing— the theory that taxes should be lowered to stimulate economic activity, which would in turn produce more tax revenue to compensate for the lower rates. With his wonky whiz-kid persona, computer-like mental powers, and combative style, he browbeat Democratic congressmen and senators who challenged his views. But he soon incurred the wrath of political conservatives when he confessed to Atlantic reporter William Greider that supply-side economics was really window dressing for reducing the rates on high incomes. Among other acts of apostasy, he called doctrinaire supply-siders “naive.” The 1981 article created a sensation and prompted Reagan to ask him over lunch, “You have hurt me. Why?” Stockman famously described the meeting as a “trip to the woodshed.” Though the president himself forgave him, Stockman’s loose lips undercut his power at the White House, and in 1985 he left government to become an investment banker at Salomon Brothers.
David Carey (King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone)
JULIAN HUXLEY’S “EUGENICS MANIFESTO”: “Eugenics Manifesto” was the name given to an article supporting eugenics. The document, which appeared in Nature, September 16, 1939, was a joint statement issued by America’s and Britain’s most prominent biologists, and was widely referred to as the “Eugenics Manifesto.” The manifesto was a response to a request from Science Service, of Washington, D.C. for a reply to the question “How could the world’s population be improved most effectively genetically?” Two of the main signatories and authors were Hermann J. Muller and Julian Huxley. Julian Huxley, as this book documents, was the founding director of UNESCO from the famous Huxley family. Muller was an American geneticist, educator and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation. Put into the context of the timeline, this document was published 15 years after “Mein Kampf” and a year after the highly publicized violence of Kristallnacht. In other words, there is no way either Muller or Huxley were unaware at the moment of publication of the historical implications of eugenic agendas.
A.E. Samaan (From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848)
For years I’ve been asking myself (and my readers) whether these propagandists—commonly called corporate or capitalist journalists—are evil or stupid. I vacillate day by day. Most often I think both. But today I’m thinking evil. Here’s why. You may have heard of John Stossel. He’s a long-term analyst, now anchor, on a television program called 20/20, and is most famous for his segment called “Give Me A Break,” in which, to use his language, he debunks commonly held myths. Most of the rest of us would call what he does “lying to serve corporations.” For example, in one of his segments, he claimed that “buying organic [vegetables] could kill you.” He stated that specially commissioned studies had found no pesticide residues on either organically grown or pesticide-grown fruits and vegetables, and had found further that organic foods are covered with dangerous strains of E. coli. But the researchers Stossel cited later stated he misrepresented their research. The reason they didn’t find any pesticides is because they never tested for them (they were never asked to). Further, they said Stossel misrepresented the tests on E. coli. Stossel refused to issue a retraction. Worse, the network aired the piece two more times. And still worse, it came out later that 20/20’s executive director Victor Neufeld knew about the test results and knew that Stossel was lying a full three months before the original broadcast.391 This is not unusual for Stossel and company.
Derrick Jensen (Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization)
It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.
Alyson Noel (Fated (Soul Seekers, #1))
the device had the property of transresistance and should have a name similar to devices such as the thermistor and varistor, Pierce proposed transistor. Exclaimed Brattain, “That’s it!” The naming process still had to go through a formal poll of all the other engineers, but transistor easily won the election over five other options.35 On June 30, 1948, the press gathered in the auditorium of Bell Labs’ old building on West Street in Manhattan. The event featured Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain as a group, and it was moderated by the director of research, Ralph Bown, dressed in a somber suit and colorful bow tie. He emphasized that the invention sprang from a combination of collaborative teamwork and individual brilliance: “Scientific research is coming more and more to be recognized as a group or teamwork job. . . . What we have for you today represents a fine example of teamwork, of brilliant individual contributions, and of the value of basic research in an industrial framework.”36 That precisely described the mix that had become the formula for innovation in the digital age. The New York Times buried the story on page 46 as the last item in its “News of Radio” column, after a note about an upcoming broadcast of an organ concert. But Time made it the lead story of its science section, with the headline “Little Brain Cell.” Bell Labs enforced the rule that Shockley be in every publicity photo along with Bardeen and Brattain. The most famous one shows the three of them in Brattain’s lab. Just as it was about to be taken, Shockley sat down in Brattain’s chair, as if it were his desk and microscope, and became the focal point of the photo. Years later Bardeen would describe Brattain’s lingering dismay and his resentment of Shockley: “Boy, Walter hates this picture. . . . That’s Walter’s equipment and our experiment,
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
Jones, along with the US military attaché in Indonesia, took Subandrio’s advice. He emphasized to Washington that the United States should support the Indonesian military as a more effective, long-term anticommunist strategy. The country of Indonesia couldn’t be simply broken into pieces to slow down the advance of global socialism, so this was a way that the US could work within existing conditions. This strategic shift would begin soon, and would prove very fruitful. But behind the scenes, the CIA boys dreamed up wild schemes. On the softer side, a CIA front called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which funded literary magazines and fine arts around the world, published and distributed books in Indonesia, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the famous anticommunist collection The God That Failed.33 And the CIA discussed simply murdering Sukarno. The Agency went so far as to identify the “asset” who would kill him, according to Richard M. Bissell, Wisner’s successor as deputy director for plans.34 Instead, the CIA hired pornographic actors, including a very rough Sukarno look-alike, and produced an adult film in a bizarre attempt to destroy his reputation. The Agency boys knew that Sukarno routinely engaged in extramarital affairs. But everyone in Indonesia also knew it. Indonesian elites didn’t shy away from Sukarno’s activities the way the Washington press corps protected philanderers like JFK. Some of Sukarno’s supporters viewed his promiscuity as a sign of his power and masculinity. Others, like Sumiyati and members of the Gerwani Women’s Movement, viewed it as an embarrassing defect. But the CIA thought this was their big chance to expose him. So they got a Hollywood film crew together.35 They wanted to spread the rumor that Sukarno had slept with a beautiful blond flight attendant who worked for the KGB, and was therefore both immoral and compromised. To play the president, the filmmakers (that is, Bing Crosby and his brother Larry) hired a “Hispanic-looking” actor, and put him in heavy makeup to make him look a little more Indonesian. They also wanted him bald, since exposing Sukarno—who always wore a hat—as such might further embarrass him. The idea was to destroy the genuine affection that young Sakono, and Francisca, and millions of other Indonesians, felt for the Founding Father of their country. The thing was never released—not because this was immoral or a bad idea, but because the team couldn’t put together a convincing enough film.36
Vincent Bevins (The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World)
Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.
Hank Bracker
Although a partner’s compensation depends in large part on the amount of business he brings to the Firm, no one goes out to knock on doors. The Firm waits for the phone to ring. And ring it does, not because McKinsey sells, but because McKinsey markets. It does this in several different ways, all of them designed to make sure that on the day a senior executive decides she has a business problem, one of the first calls she makes is to the local office of McKinsey. The Firm produces a steady stream of books and articles, some of them extremely influential, such as the famous In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman.* McKinsey also publishes its own scholarly journal, The McKinsey Quarterly, which it sends gratis to its clients, as well as to its former consultants, many of whom now occupy senior positions at potential clients. The Firm invites (and gets) a lot of coverage by journalists. Many McKinsey partners and directors are internationally known as experts in their fields.
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
Experimentation also proved serendipitous for Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, when they were putting together the Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California, north of San Diego. It was destined to become one of the most successful brewing startups of the 1990s. In The Craft of Stone Brewing Co. Koch and Wagner confess that the home-brewed ale that became Arrogant Bastard Ale and propelled Stone to fame in the craft brewing world, started with a mistake. Greg Koch recalls that Wagner exclaimed “Aw, hell!” as he brewed an ale on his brand spanking new home-brewing system. “I miscalculated and added the ingredients in the wrong percentages,” he told Koch. “And not just a little. There’s a lot of extra malt and hops in there.” Koch recalls suggesting they dump it, but Wagner decided to let it ferment and see what it tasted like. Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, founders of Stone Brewery. Photograph © Stone Brewing Co. They both loved the resulting hops bomb, but they didn’t know what to do with it. Koch was sure that nobody was “going to be able to handle it. I mean, we both loved it, but it was unlike anything else that was out there. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with it, but we knew we had to do something with it somewhere down the road.”20 Koch said the beer literally introduced itself as Arrogant Bastard Ale. It seemed ironic to me that a beer from southern California, the world of laid back surfers, should produce an ale with a name that many would identify with New York City. But such are the ironies of the craft brewing revolution. Arrogant Bastard was relegated to the closet for the first year of Stone Brewing Co.’s existence. The founders figured their more commercial brew would be Stone Pale Ale, but its first-year sales figures were not strong, and the company’s board of directors decided to release Arrogant Bastard. “They thought it would help us have more of a billboard effect; with more Stone bottles next to each other on a retail shelf, they become that much more visible, and it sends a message that we’re a respected, established brewery with a diverse range of beers,” Wagner writes. Once they decided to release the Arrogant Bastard, they decided to go all out. The copy on the back label of Arrogant Bastard has become famous in the beer world: Arrogant Bastard Ale Ar-ro-gance (ar’ogans) n. The act or quality of being arrogant; haughty; Undue assumption; overbearing conceit. This is an aggressive ale. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory—maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beverage will give you more sex appeal. The label continues along these lines for a couple of hundred words. Some call it a brilliant piece of reverse psychology. But Koch insists he was just listening to the beer that had emerged from a mistake in Wagner’s kitchen. In addition to innovative beers and marketing, Koch and Wagner have also made their San Diego brewery a tourist destination, with the Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens, with plans to add a hotel to the Stone empire.
Steve Hindy (The Craft Beer Revolution: How a Band of Microbrewers Is Transforming the World's Favorite Drink)
Casey was most famous for his supposed lack of diction; his “mumbling” became so legendary in Washington that Reagan quipped that Casey was the only CIA director in history who didn’t need to use a scrambler phone. On some minutes of National Security Council meetings, Casey’s indecipherable comments were recorded as “??????.
Steven F. Hayward (The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989)
The ghastly mother-in-law is well represented by a little comedy film of 1952: No Room for the Groom, directed by Douglas Sirk, the fine German director more famous for his melodramas that humanely criticize American morals and values.
Jeanine Basinger (I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies)
There’s another level at which attention operates, this has to do with leadership, I argue that leaders need three kinds of focus, to be really effective, the first is an inner focus, let me tell you about a case that’s actually from the annals of neurology, there was a corporate lawyer, who unfortunately had a small prefrontal brain tumour, it was discovered early, operated successfully, after the surgery though it was a very puzzling picture, because he was absolutely as smart as he had been before, a very high IQ, no problem with attention or memory, but he couldn’t do his job anymore, he couldn’t do any job, in fact he ended up out of work, his wife left him, he lost his home, he’s living in his brother spare bedroom and in despair he went to see a famous neurologist named Antonio Damasio. Damasio specialized in the circuitry between the prefrontal area which is where we consciously pay attention to what matters now, where we make decisions, where we learn and the emotional centers in the midbrain, particularly the amygdala, which is our radar for danger, it triggers our strong emotions. They had cut the connection between the prefrontal area and emotional centers and Damasio at first was puzzled, he realized that this fellow on every neurological test was perfectly fine but something was wrong, then he got a clue, he asked the lawyer when should we have our next appointment and he realized the lawyer could give him the rational pros and cons of every hour for the next two weeks, but he didn’t know which is best. And Damasio says when we’re making a decision any decision, when to have the next appointment, should I leave my job for another one, what strategy should we follow, going into the future, should I marry this fellow compared to all the other fellows, those are decisions that require we draw on our entire life experience and the circuitry that collects that life experience is very base brain, it’s very ancient in the brain, and it has no direct connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words, it has very rich connectivity to the gastro- intestinal tract, to the gut, so we get a gut feeling, feels right, doesn’t feel right. Damasio calls them somatic markers, it’s a language of the body and the ability to tune into this is extremely important because this is valuable data too - they did a study of Californian entrepreneurs and asked them “how do you make your decisions?”, these are people who built a business from nothing to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they more or less said the same strategy “I am a voracious gatherer of information, I want to see the numbers, but if it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go ahead with the deal”. They’re tuning into the gut feeling. I know someone, I grew up in farm region of California, the Central Valley and my high school had a rival high school in the next town and I met someone who went to the other high school, he was not a good student, he almost failed, came close to not graduating high school, he went to a two-year college, a community college, found his way into film, which he loved and got into a film school, in film school his student project caught the eye of a director, who asked him to become an assistant and he did so well at that the director arranged for him to direct his own film, someone else’s script, he did so well at that they let him direct a script that he had written and that film did surprisingly well, so the studio that financed that film said if you want to do another one, we will back you. And he, however, hated the way the studio edited the film, he felt he was a creative artist and they had butchered his art. He said I am gonna do the film on my own, I’m gonna finance it myself, everyone in the film business that he knew said this is a huge mistake, you shouldn’t do this, but he went ahead, then he ran out of money, had to go to eleven banks before he could get a loan, he managed to finish the film, you may have seen
Daniel Goleman
Art director Tom Trimble, who had designed the famous Tonight Show desk-and-sofa configuration, was brought in to construct a similar set for Griffin.
Steve Randisi (The Merv Griffin Show: The Inside Story)
Meanwhile, in Boston, Running While Female was literally a crime: any woman who dared attempt the Boston Marathon in the 1960s was subject to arrest by the cops or, if your dad was in charge, a beating. “If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her,” race director Will Cloney famously snarled after Kathrine Switzer finagled her way onto the course in 1967.
Christopher McDougall (Running with Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America)
Iron Man‘s success more than made up for that July’s Incredible Hulk. The result of Marvel’s most difficult production right up to the present, the second Hulk film starred Ed Norton, who proved a terrible fit for Maisel and Feige’s philosophy that studio executives should be the ultimate creative authority. Undeniably one of the best actors of his generation, Norton is also famous in Hollywood for being “difficult” and highly opinionated, refusing to allow artistic choices he disagrees with and seeking to rewrite scripts he doesn’t like, which is what he did on The Incredible Hulk. The clashes intensified in post-production, and the director, Louis Letterier, sided with Norton over the studio. They both learned who has the ultimate power at Marvel, though, when Feige took control of editing. He excised many of the darkest scenes, including a suicide attempt meant to portray how much the scientist Bruce Banner wants to rid himself of the curse of transforming into the Hulk when he’s mad. The resulting movie was still darker and more dramatic than any other Marvel Studios production and not different enough from the Hulk movie of 2003. It grossed only $263 million at the box office and barely broke even, the worst performance for any Marvel Studios film to date. The Incredible Hulk never got a sequel, but the character has returned in Avengers films, played by the easygoing Mark Ruffalo. The usually cheerful Feige stated that the decision to recast the role was “rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members.
Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
Epstein also channeled funds from his famous friends like Bill Gates to the lab. In another email, the lab’s then–director of development and strategy, Peter Cohen, wrote, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein. For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.” (Gates’s rep denied Epstein had anything to do with the donation.) What did these men get from their associations with Epstein?
Dylan Howard (Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Front Page Detectives))
Much ink has been spilled over whether fascism represented an emergency form of capitalism, a mechanism devised by capitalists by which the fascist state—their agent—disciplined the workforce in a way no traditional dictatorship could do. Today it is quite clear that businessmen often objected to specific aspects of fascist economic policies, sometimes with success. But fascist economic policy responded to political priorities, and not to economic rationale. Both Mussolini and Hitler tended to think that economics was amenable to a ruler’s will. Mussolini returned to the gold standard and revalued the lira at 90 to the British pound in December 1927 for reasons of national prestige, and over the objections of his own finance minister. Fascism was not the first choice of most businessmen, but most of them preferred it to the alternatives that seemed likely in the special conditions of 1922 and 1933—socialism or a dysfunctional market system. So they mostly acquiesced in the formation of a fascist regime and accommodated to its requirements of removing Jews from management and accepting onerous economic controls. In time, most German and Italian businessmen adapted well to working with fascist regimes, at least those gratified by the fruits of rearmament and labor discipline and the considerable role given to them in economic management. Mussolini’s famous corporatist economic organization, in particular, was run in practice by leading businessmen. Peter Hayes puts it succinctly: the Nazi regime and business had “converging but not identical interests.” Areas of agreement included disciplining workers, lucrative armaments contracts, and job-creation stimuli. Important areas of conflict involved government economic controls, limits on trade, and the high cost of autarky—the economic self-sufficiency by which the Nazis hoped to overcome the shortages that had lost Germany World War I. Autarky required costly substitutes—Ersatz— for such previously imported products as oil and rubber. Economic controls damaged smaller companies and those not involved in rearmament. Limits on trade created problems for companies that had formerly derived important profits from exports. The great chemical combine I. G. Farben is an excellent example: before 1933, Farben had prospered in international trade. After 1933, the company’s directors adapted to the regime’s autarky and learned to prosper mightily as the suppliers of German rearmament. The best example of the expense of import substitution was the Hermann Goering Werke, set up to make steel from the inferior ores and brown coal of Silesia. The steel manufacturers were forced to help finance this operation, to which they raised vigorous objections.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
Barbary Coast was rather a mess when Howard Hawks took over direction of a film initially assigned by Sam Goldwyn to William Wyler. Hawks was famous—and sometimes notorious—for rewriting scripts on the set, inviting his actors to contribute lines. At the same time, he was loath to cede his authority, or to allow actors to take over a production. Meta Carpenter, Hawks’s secretary and sometime script supervisor, vividly recalled how curt—even insulting—the director could be. “Shut up, Walter,” Hawks barked after Brennan apparently offered one too many suggestions. Carpenter never forgot the sight of the deflated actor, who took a day to recover from this rebuff. But Walter was resilient and adaptable. He later told his granddaughter Claudia that he survived the exhausting work of filmmaking by taking catnaps during breaks. He could sleep anywhere on anything—even a coil of rope.
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
Harold Ramis, the actor and director most famous to people of my generation for his role as Egon in the movie Ghostbusters, once laid out his rule for success: “Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful.” Ramis was lucky: The most talented person in the room was his friend Bill Murray. If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
As a Capitol Hill staffer for Texas representative Michael McCaul, Miles Taylor saw Trump from the perspective of a committed Republican. Later, after serving in senior positions in the administration, Taylor became so disaffected with Trump that he wrote the famous “Anonymous” critique of the president that ran on the op-ed page of the New York Times. But long before Trump was even a candidate, he had an inkling there would be trouble: “In the middle of the 2016 race, I was working on Capitol Hill at the time, on the House side, as the policy director on the House Homeland Security Committee. Michael McCaul was chairman, Paul Ryan was Speaker. And we were in the midst of developing something for Paul Ryan called the Better Way agenda. Ryan wanted to put out an optimistic center-right vision for America’s future. Very policy oriented, but also a brand that Republicans could run on for years. He wanted this to be enduring. And I think, frankly, and had it been successful, he would have seen it as the centerpiece of his time as Speaker.
David Rothkopf (American Resistance: The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation)
Rowan liked to point out that Norwegian Cruise Lines, another Apollo company, had 600 subsidiaries. “Did each one of those entities require independent directors?” he would ask rhetorically.
Sujeet Indap (The Caesars Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Power and Greed of Wall Street)
All right, as a gambler I liked the idea of Betfair, because it offered better odds than the bookmakers and, if it was successful, it would be a thorn in their side. Every punter loves to hate the bookies. But, then again, I am not a follower of Victor Kiam, who famously bought Remington because he liked shaving with its razor. I never buy into a company because I like its product. For the first couple of years that I was a part-owner and director of Betfair, I didn’t register as a user. To be honest, I’m not very good with technology and I didn’t know how to go online and bet. I remember being ridiculed by some of my fellow Betfair directors when I remarked, nearly three years after making my investment, that I had just started using the site and found it impressive. How could anyone invest in their baby without giving it an extensive road-test first, without understanding how to use it? Wilful ignorance is one of my best investment tools. I don’t want to know too much before making an investment. I don’t want to cloud my judgement, or make the decision difficult. I don’t want to know about all the risks or understand them. I just want to be reasonably sure that it’s a star business. That makes life simple and fun. And profitable.
Richard Koch (The Star Principle: How it can make you rich)
Beethoven and Paul McCartney cited dreams as the spark behind some of their musical compositions (including McCartney’s famous “Yesterday”). Some of the most recognizable sequences in film—sections of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Fellini’s 8 ½, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life—are translations of the directors’ dreams. Mary Shelley credited dreams with inspiring Frankenstein; E. B. White with Stuart Little.
Alice Robb (Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey)
Legasov was treated especially poorly. On the eve of the publication of the list of rewarded people, everybody was absolutely sure he would be awarded, with other chosen ones, the high Soviet reward of Hero Star, Hero of Russia. Alexandrov, director of the Institute, congratulated Legasov in public at the Institute. And in the morning, his name wasn’t on the list. It was crossed out. There was a lot of talk and rumors about this. Then the Chernobylers decided that this was done by Gorbachev, who disliked the famous Academician. The image of the ex-president, firmly formed by people, was in absolute conformity with this action.[3]
Alexander Borovoi (My Chernobyl: The Human Story of a Scientist and the nuclear power Plant Catastrophe)
On one of those nights in January 2014, we sat next to each other in Maria Vostra, happy and content, smoking nice greens, with one of my favorite movies playing on the large flat-screen TVs: Once Upon a Time in America. I took a picture of James Woods and Robert De Niro on the TV screen in Maria Vostra's cozy corner, which I loved to share with Martina. They were both wearing hats and suits, standing next to each other. Robert de Niro looked a bit like me and his character, Noodles, (who was a goy kid in the beginning of the movie, growing up with Jewish kids) on the picture, was as naive as I was. I just realized that James Woods—who plays an evil Jewish guy in the movie, acting like Noodles' friend all along, yet taking his money, his woman, taking away his life, and trying to kill him at one point—until the point that Noodles has to escape to save his life and his beloved ones—looks almost exactly like Adam would look like if he was a bit older. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare That sounds like an ancient spell or rather directions, instructions to me, the director instructing his actors, being one of the actors himself as well, an ancient spell, that William Shakespeare must have read it from a secret book or must have heard it somewhere. Casting characters for certain roles to act like this or like that as if they were the director’s custom made monsters. The extensions of his own will, desires and actions. The Reconquista was a centuries-long series of battles by Christian states to expel the Muslims (Moors), who had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula since the 8th century. The Reconquista ended on January 2, 1492. The same year Columbus, whose statue stands atop a Corinthian custom-made column down the Port at the bottom of the Rambla, pointing with his finger toward the West, had discovered America on October 12, 1492. William Shakespeare was born in April 1564. He had access to knowledge that had been unavailable to white people for thousands of years. He must have formed a close relationship with someone of royal lineage, or used trick, who then permitted him to enter the secret library of the Anglican Church. “A character has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure what he/she’s supposed to be doing.” – Anthony Burgess Martina proudly shared with me her admiration for the Argentine author Julio Cortazar, who was renowned across South America. She quoted one of his famous lines, saying: “Vida es como una cebolla, hay que pelarla llorando,” which translates to “Life is like an onion, you have to peel it crying.” Martina shared with me her observation that the sky in Europe felt lower compared to America. She mentioned that the clouds appeared larger in America, giving a sense of a higher and more expansive sky, while in Europe, it felt like the sky had a lower and more limiting ceiling. “The skies are much higher in Argentina, Tomas, in all America. Here in Europe the sky is so low. In Argentina there are huge clouds and the sky is huge, Tomas.” – Martina Blaterare “It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.” – George Orwell, 1984
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
Lesser is back in New York. He’d been in Paris for two months working as a gofer for the film director Maurice Barraque. To Lesser and his fellow Francophile cineastes, every one of Barraque’s films is a revelation. Beginning in the late sixties Barraque had directed and starred in his own films, all made for nothing, in circumstances that were as haphazard as they were abject. His best works were bolts of genius quickly written, hastily shot and never revised. He was a beautiful drug addict, a poet and painter of light and sound. Onscreen, he was as luminous a presence as the great beauties of European cinema who played opposite him. They worked for nothing, they expected nothing - half of his films were never finished. It was a career famous for disappointment and disaster: Cinema is haunted. We do not watch it, it watches us. But suddenly, late in life he’d had an improbable, unexpected renaissance and began churning out, year after year, small-scale diary-like films. He became almost respectable. All he required was a 16-mm camera, a handful of actors, a few rooms for them to move about in. And, of course, the streets of Paris.
Bill Whitten (Brutes)
Jobs noticed that when the heart gave him an intuition, it was for him a command that he had to follow, regardless of the opinions of others. The only thing that mattered was finding a way to give shape to the intuition. For Jobs, the vegan diet, Zen meditation, a life immersed in nature, abstention from alcohol and coffee were necessary to nourish his inner voice, the voice of his heart and strengthen his ability to intuit the future. At the same time, this caused great difficulties. He was sensitive, intuitive, irrational and nervous. He was aware of the limitations that his irrationality caused in handling a large company, such as Apple Computer, and chose a rationalist manager to run the company: John Sculley, a famous manager he admired but with whom he entered continually in conflict, to the point that in 1985 the board of directors decided to fire Jobs from Apple, the company he had founded. Apple Computer continued to make money for a while with the products designed by Jobs, but after a few years the decline began and in the mid-1990s it came to the brink of bankruptcy. On December 21, 1996, the board of directors asked Jobs to return as the president’s personal advisor. Jobs accepted. He asked for a salary of one dollar a year in exchange for the guarantee that his insights, even if crazy, were accepted unconditionally. In a few months he revolutionized the products and on September 16, 1997 he became interim CEO. Apple Computer resurrected in less than a year. How did he manage? He believed that we should not let the noise of others’ opinions dull our inner voice. And, more importantly, he repeated that we must always have the courage to believe in our heart and in our intuitions, because they already know the future and know where we need to go. For Jobs, everything else was secondary.
Ulisse Di Corpo (Syntropy, Precognition and Retrocausality)
How Vitalik Buterin changed the blockchain space. Vitalik Buterin is one of the most famous and accomplished cryptocurrency entrepreneurs out there; he is best known for co-founding Ethereum - the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and one of the busiest blockchain networks out there. Vitalik's Ethereum was one of the first blockchains to host smart contracts and changed the layout of the blockchain world for good. Born in Russia, Vitalik's father was a computer scientist and hence was exposed to computers from a young age; his family moved to Canada for better opportunities at the age of six. Vitalik's genius was recognized by his school when he was put in the class for gifted children in elementary school. Career Research assistant Vitalik was keen on cryptography from early on in his life; he was a researcher assistant for cryptographer Ian Goldman who was formally a part of the board of directors in the Tor network. As a result, he was exposed to quality individuals and budding concepts like cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin weekly In 2011, Buterin accepted a job of writing an article in exchange for 5 Bitcoin, which were around $3.5(INR300) at the time. The job was posted by another enthusiast on the Bitcoin forum; he offered the job to anyone who was interested in the subject and was willing to write in exchange for Bitcoins. He kept on writing until the website closed because of a lack of profits. Bitcoin Magazine In 2012, Mihai Alise reached out to Buterin for Bitcoin Magazine, a position that Vitalik would later accept as cofounder and become the lead writer. The Bitcoin Magazine became the first serious publication on cryptocurrencies and became a part of the print media.
coingabbar
At school we were in The Visit, the Swiss play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt about Claire Zachanassian, the world-famous billionaire who returns home to her impoverished village and says she will pay a billion dollars to whoever kills her former love, who spurned her.
James Burrows (Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More)
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers,” as a famously clever screenwriter/director/journalist named Ben Hecht once wrote, “is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” The same is true of research and science. Trying to tell what’s true by looking at the latest articles published in a journal—and particularly in nutrition—is another fool’s game. The best idea is to attend little to the latest research and focus instead on the long-term trends, the accumulation of studies (one hopes, interpreted without bias), even if the long-term trends rarely, if ever, appear in the news.
Gary Taubes (The Case for Keto: The Truth About Low-Carb, High-Fat Eating)
My evening was a perfect demonstration of how hard it is for one side to really understand the other. I think Hollywood feels more comfortable welcoming directors who are convicted pedophiles, famous actresses who are also thieves, boxers who are convicted rapists, directors who push cocaine, rappers who sell heroin, singers who solicit prostitutes, and actors who beat up their woman than a Republican in their midst. In fact, the people who fit into those categories still enjoy the professional adoration of their peers in Hollywood, even amidst the suspicion and guilt. It's like the only that can really ruin your reputation as a celebrity is to come out as a Republican.
Stacey Dash (There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative)
A famous case involved U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who purchased 156 acres of wild chaparral but wanted to build five mansions on it. Needless to say there was going to be a significant disruption of the fragile habitat, and his building plans were rejected. The executive director of the Coastal Commission called it “one of the three worst projects that I’ve seen in terms of environmental devastation.” Their refusal to rubber-stamp projects is proof that local government can indeed protect the habitats and species of ecologically fragile areas.
Greg Graffin (Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence)
The secret is just to not give up hope. It’s very hard not to, because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side. And you just have to hang in through that.” ~ George Lucas
Vanessa Moore (30 Famous Cinema Directors: How Their Careers Began)
huge bathtubs. One night in 1943, DeMille
Stephen Schochet (Hollywood Stories: a Book about Celebrities, Movie Stars, Gossip, Directors, Famous People, History, and more!)
awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States. My curtain call worked. Until it didn’t. Still speaking in his usual stream-of-consciousness and free-association cadence, the president moved his eyes again, sweeping from left to right, toward me and my protective curtain. This time, I was not so lucky. The small eyes with the white shadows stopped on me. “Jim!” Trump exclaimed. The president called me forward. “He’s more famous than me.” Awesome. My wife Patrice has known me since I was nineteen. In the endless TV coverage of what felt to me like a thousand-yard walk across the Blue Room, back at our home she was watching TV and pointing at the screen: “That’s Jim’s ‘oh shit’ face.” Yes, it was. My inner voice was screaming: “How could he think this is a good idea? Isn’t he supposed to be the master of television? This is a complete disaster. And there is no fricking way I’m going to hug him.” The FBI and its director are not on anyone’s political team. The entire nightmare of the Clinton email investigation had been about protecting the integrity and independence of the FBI and the Department of Justice, about safeguarding the reservoir of trust and credibility. That Trump would appear to publicly thank me on his second day in office was a threat to the reservoir. Near the end of my thousand-yard walk, I extended my right hand to President Trump. This was going to be a handshake, nothing more. The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn’t. I thwarted the hug, but I got something worse in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. “I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn’t get any worse. President Trump made a motion as if to invite me to stand with him and the vice president and Joe Clancy. Backing away, I waved it off with a smile. “I’m not worthy,” my expression tried to say. “I’m not suicidal,” my inner voice said. Defeated and depressed, I retreated back to the far side of the room. The press was excused, and the police chiefs and directors started lining up for pictures with the president. They were very quiet. I made like I was getting in the back of the line and slipped out the side door, through the Green Room, into the hall, and down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone say the score from the Packers-Falcons game. Perfect. It is possible that I was reading too much into the usual Trump theatrics, but the episode left me worried. It was no surprise that President Trump behaved in a manner that was completely different from his predecessors—I couldn’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush asking someone to come onstage like a contestant on The Price Is Right. What was distressing was what Trump symbolically seemed to be asking leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to do—to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring. To show their deference and loyalty. It was tremendously important that these leaders not do that—or be seen to even look like they were doing that. Trump either didn’t know that or didn’t care, though I’d spend the next several weeks quite memorably, and disastrously, trying to make this point to him and his staff.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
Lord Valentia famously observed that it was better that ‘India be ruled from a palace than a counting house’; but it was this spendthrift use of Company funds that more than anything gradually eroded Wellesley’s support among the Company Directors,
William Dalrymple (White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India)
Legends of Bangladesh - A bunch of pure souls who achieved the glory for a country, Bangladesh, will remember forever as the legends of the nation. The world will know them for their work, sacrifice, love and mostly commitment to give best to their country until last breath. Some of them are famous for writing, some are journalism, Actor movie directors, sportsmen, cricketer, Footballer, economist, scientist, photographer, singer, businessman, martyr, architect, magician and so on. Its not enough to salute and remember them, nationwide respect and acknowledgment with proper mind will fulfill their destiny of making a golden country with all those hard work.
hb arif
Sean Joyce, who served as my first deputy director, became famous in the organization for hitting “reply all” when some bureaucrat within the Bureau sent an all-employee message instructing personnel to shelter in place or flee in the event of an “active shooter” in the workplace. Sean replied that any special agent who took that advice and hid or failed to run toward an active shooter would be fired.
James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
Vladimir Mayakovsky was the Futurist poet Shostakovich had gone to watch when he was a boy. Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of the country’s most famous (or infamous) stage directors.
M.T. Anderson (Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad)
For the time being, however, his bent was literary and religious rather than balletic. He loved, and what seventh grader doesn’t, the abstracter foxtrots and more metaphysical twists of a Dostoevsky, a Gide, a Mailer. He longed for the experience of some vivider pain than the mere daily hollowness knotted into his tight young belly, and no weekly stomp-and-holler of group therapy with other jejune eleven-year-olds was going to get him his stripes in the major leagues of suffering, crime, and resurrection. Only a bona-fide crime would do that, and of all the crimes available murder certainly carried the most prestige, as no less an authority than Loretta Couplard was ready to attest, Loretta Couplard being not only the director and co-owner of the Lowen School but the author, as well, of two nationally televised scripts, both about famous murders of the 20th Century. They’d even done a unit in social studies on the topic: A History of Crime in Urban America. The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell, R.N., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1951, whose skull had been smashed by three drunken teenagers. They had meant to knock her unconscious so they could screw her, which was 1951 in a nutshell. The eighteen-year-olds, Bill Morey and Max Pell, got life; Dave Royal (Loretta’s hero) was a year younger and got off with twenty-two years. Her second murder was tragic in tone and consequently inspired more respect, though not among the critics, unfortunately. Possibly because her heroine, also a Pauline (Pauline Wichura), though more interesting and complicated had also been more famous in her own day and ever since. Which made the competition, one best-selling novel and a serious film biography, considerably stiffen Miss Wichura had been a welfare worker in Atlanta, Georgia, very much into environment and the population problem, this being the immediate pre-Regents period when anyone and everyone was legitimately starting to fret. Pauline decided to do something, viz., reduce the population herself and in the fairest way possible. So whenever any of the families she visited produced one child above the three she’d fixed, rather generously, as the upward limit, she found some unobtrusive way of thinning that family back to the preferred maximal size. Between 1989 and 1993 Pauline’s journals (Random House, 1994) record twenty-six murders, plus an additional fourteen failed attempts. In addition she had the highest welfare department record in the U.S. for abortions and sterilizations among the families whom she advised. “Which proves, I think,” Little Mister Kissy Lips had explained one day after school to his friend Jack, “that a murder doesn’t have to be of someone famous to be a form of idealism.” But of course idealism was only half the story: the other half was curiosity. And beyond idealism and curiosity there was probably even another half, the basic childhood need to grow up and kill someone.
Thomas M. Disch (334)