Dyke Life Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Dyke Life. Here they are! All 86 of them:

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
Henry Van Dyke
You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
Henry Van Dyke
It means you never know what's going to happen,' I said. 'You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
Those songs [Mary Poppins score] didn't just get under my skin, they became a part of me then and there, and thinking about it now, they've never left.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
Life is like a box of chocolates, I'm a nerd and I read books
Dick Van Dyke
A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dyke. And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail, but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider--- lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe--- should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
And I understand my sisters when they say every woman has a story that's been told a maxim of one soul, maybe less And that is why you'll never hear me call a woman slut, bitch or a dyke, No matter what she does, because I do not blame her I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her, I blame these corporations whose images tell them they hate her, And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how great to life and to God that SHE created her
Mark Gonzales
In general, things either work out or they don’t, and if they don’t, you figure out something else, a plan B. There’s nothing wrong with plan B.
Dick Van Dyke (Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer)
Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
Henry Van Dyke
dykes were put here to tip the scales! we have a very important job and i wouldn't trade it for the world. give me a choice between breeding, accelerated aging, living with an orangutan, and maid duty for life...or, autonomy, black boots, multiple orgasms, cats instead of kids, people who say what they mean, and nothing stopping me from doing whatever i wanna do...and guess which one i pick?
Diane DiMassa (The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist)
I’m saying I want to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.
Nicole Dykes (Soulmates (Soulmates, #1))
be glαd of life, becαuse it gives you the chαnce to love αnd to work αnd to plαy αnd to look up αt the stαrs; to be sαtisfied with your posessions, to despise nothing in the world except fαlsehood αnd meαnness αnd to feαr nothing except cowαrdice; to be governed by your αdmirαtions rαther thαn by your disgusts, to covet nothing thαt is your neighbour's except his kindness of heαrt αnd gentleness of mαnners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends and to spend αs much time αs you cαn with body αnd with spirit.
Henry Van Dyke
Just because I’ve been gone from this country for most of my life doesn’t mean I understand it any less. When I was fifteen I left Jamaica. I knew that I was a lesbian then and, because of what I looked like, I was an out lesbian. It was hard for me. It was hard for the thirteen years I was in England, for various reasons, and it’s going to be difficult here as well. I don’t anticipate anything being easy. But I’d rather suffer the chance of someone accosting me for being a dyke than suffer the emotional violence I’d do to myself if I wasn’t honest about who I am.
Fiona Zedde (Bliss)
Be careful not to trip over the ottoman.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
I have also heard and read various accounts of why they [Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner] liked me. My favorites? I wasn't too good-looking, I walked a little funny, and I was basically kind of average and ordinary. I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
The way the girl soaked in the world around her, gathered treasures, and searched for miracles-and found them right where she walked and breathed and lived her moments. Hers was a rich, deep, expansive life right there on that farm.
Amanda Dykes (Set the Stars Alight)
He knew that all was well, because he had done the best that he could, from day to day. He had been true to the light that had been given to him. He had looked for more. And if he had not found it, if a failure was all that came out of his life, doubtless that was the best that was possible. He had not seen the revelation of "life everlasting, incorruptible and immortal." But he knew that even if he could live his earthly life over again, it could not be otherwise than it had been.
Henry Van Dyke (The Story of the Other Wise Man)
Let me but live my life from year to year, With forward face and unreluctant soul, Not hastening to, nor turning from the goal; Nor mourning things that disappear In the dim past, nor holding back in fear From what the future veils; but with a whole And happy heart, that pays its toll To youth and age, and travels on with cheer. So let the way wind up the hill or down, Through rough or smooth, the journey will be joy, Still seeking what I sought when but a boy -- New friendship, high adventure, and a crown, I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest, Because the road's last turn will be the best.
Henry Van Dyke (The Poems of Henry Van Dyke)
Faggot” was a word I had employed all my life. And now here they were, The Cabal, The Coven, The Others, The Monsters, The Outsiders, The Faggots, The Dykes, dressed in all their human clothes. I am black, and have been plundered and have lost my body. But perhaps I too had the capacity for plunder, maybe I would take another human’s body to confirm myself in a community. Perhaps I already had. Hate gives identity. The nigger, the fag, the bitch illuminate the border, illuminate what we ostensibly are not, illuminate the Dream of being white, of being a Man. We name the hated strangers and are thus confirmed in the tribe.
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me)
He had never killed a child; he had never arrested anyone. But he had broken the fragile dyke that protected the purity of his soul from the seething darkness around him. The blood of the camps and the ghettos had gushed over him and carried him away... There was no longer any divide between him and the darkness; he himself was part of the darkness.
Vasily Grossman (Life and Fate)
Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful “cosmic superman” looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
The best writers were philosophers who wrapped their commentary about life in laughter.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
Accepting that life is a perfectly imperfect experience is a crucial part of appreciating senior citizenship and coming to terms with the past.
Dick Van Dyke (Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging)
And Bob knows too well, when you've been without air so long you can't remember another way of life, even a single breath of fresh air is a lifeline.
Amanda Dykes (Whose Waves These Are (Whose Waves These Are, #1))
I found myself thinking about what worked for me, and also what I wanted to do for work, what was important to me, and what I wanted my work to say about me.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
I love ideas and stories. I always have at least one book going and am on the lookout for the next one. They feed the brain and fuel the imagination. I can’t imagine life without them.
Dick Van Dyke (Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer)
The world is dark, so dark we sometimes forget the stars. But they are always there - we need only fight to see these brilliant places of light, these echoes of the truest story. Of a man who gave his life for another - and of a Man, centuries before him, who gave His life for the world. The One who is coming....and coming.....and coming after you. Fighting for your heart. Every breathe a gift.
Amanda Dykes (Set the Stars Alight)
The show became its own little world, with its own internal rhythm and high standards.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
Something greater than me was happening. And yet, it was happening to me.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
What do you think consultants do?’       ‘Tell you things you already know in a language you don’t understand.
Keith Dixon (Altered Life (Sam Dyke Investigation, #1))
I survived—and looking back, I learned not to sweat the little stuff.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can’t spread peanut butter on the jelly.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
..why sit on the sidelines of life at any age?
Dick Van Dyke (Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer)
A life well lived is a life well given.
Amanda Dykes (Whose Waves These Are)
Like in a movie another bus appears, another poster for Les Misérables replaces the word—not the same bus because someone has written the word DYKE over Eponine’s face.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
Impossible’s where the miracles happen, Ed. If I stay put…I might have more chance at life, but what sort of livin’ is that, when I was made to do this?
Amanda Dykes (Whose Waves These Are (Whose Waves These Are, #1))
Every single of one of the station's phone lines lit up. The switchboard looked like a Fourth of July display.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
If all of life were sunshine, Our face would long to gain And feel once more upon it The cooling splash of rain. Henry Jackson Van Dyke
Lettie B. Cowman (Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings)
Everyone knows. I think even Clara knows, deep down, though she's convinced that advertising that the farm is wireless - for her meaning without Internet - adds to the draw of the place. So we all pretend it's not here and only use it when we have to. And life is better without it, honestly. It's nice not being constantly connected. It makes us... more connected, ironically.
Amanda Dykes (Set the Stars Alight)
In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
Like it or not, life is a never-ending confrontation with bouts of uncertainty and chapters of self-discovery. As I was about to learn, it is a series of fine messes that we enter, some wittingly, and others not.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
I was cyber-bullied before all those Myspace-related suicides, so my school principal wasn't really impressed when my mom complained about what was happening to me on my Xanga blog and on AIM chat. “Get your life sorted out, you fucking scitzo [sic] dyke tranny bitch,” one comment might say. Another comment would say something like, “I know she's reading this, she's so pathetic.” And, perhaps most frightening of all: “I'm going to fuck you up until your mother bleeds.
Nenia Campbell (Freaky Freshman)
You and your dyke music, Erica remarked once. I hadn’t thought of them as dykes, my beloved Indigo Girls, my Michelle Shocked, Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, Le Tigre, my Ani DiFranco. I just knew that at those shows I was whole and right. I was a person. I mattered. I was in fact not stupid or fat or ugly or lame; I was smart and valid and right and well. I had a fucking voice. The women at those shows weren’t gussied up like geishas. They talked of art, life, politics. They felt entitled to feelings and opinions and rage and poetry and laughter and tears and bodies. There was dissent. Looking “cute” was low on the list. Practical shoes were high. It mattered only that one articulate oneself properly
Elisa Albert (After Birth)
I wanted to drag them all out, flay us all, destroy all the artificial separations of history. You'd merely done what I had, after all--split from two cells into four then eight then sixteen until you've accumulated all your arms and legs and organs and pushed yourself into the world--so fucking what? You honkey, nigger, spic, dyke, cunt. If I cry out, who will hear me?
Kelly J. Cogswell (Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger)
It is a relatively recent phenomenon that human beings worry about old age, social security, medical bills, and long-term care. But you can only plan so much. In general, things either work out or they don’t, and if they don’t, you figure out something else, a plan B. There’s nothing wrong with plan B. Most of life, as I have learned, is a plan B. Or a plan C. Or plans L, M, N, O, P.
Dick Van Dyke (Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging)
Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wisemen ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lighted the reading of its well-worn pages. It has woven itself into our deepest affections, and colored our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers in our ear long after the sermons which they have adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like birds flying from far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-forgotten path. They grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, "Good-by, we shall meet again"; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light.
Henry Van Dyke
Two things," the wise man said, "fill me with awe: The starry heavens and the moral law." Nay, add another wonder to thy roll, -- The living marvel of the human soul! Born in the dust and cradled in the dark, It feels the fire of an immortal spark, And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes, The splendid secret of the unconscious skies. For God thought Light before He spoke the word; The darkness understood not, though it heard: But man looks up to where the planets swim, And thinks God's thoughts of glory after Him. What knows the star that guides the sailor's way, Or lights the lover's bower with liquid ray, Of toil and passion, danger and distress, Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness? But human hearts that suffer good and ill, And hold to virtue with a loyal will, Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife With star-surpassing victories of life. So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies, Devout astronomer, most humbly wise, For lessons brighter than the stars can give, And inward light that helps us all to live. The world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown The star-discoverer's name with high renown; Accept the flower of love we lay with these For influence sweeter than the Pleiades
Henry Van Dyke
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
David VanDyke (The Eden Plague (Plague Wars, #0))
Tough shit hurts but works. My own belief and quote in life.
Delsi Sharisee Williams-Dyke (Florida)
Touch shit hurts but works. My own belief and quote in life.
Delsi Sharisee Williams-Dyke (Florida)
And when I was in my thirties, she confessed that when I was little she and my father would go to the movies and leave me at home by myself in the crib. I would be a mess when they returned. “I don’t know how I could’ve done that,” she said. “Me neither,” I replied.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
Was there one way? No, not as far as I could tell—other than to feel loved, to love back, and to do the things that make you feel as if your life has meaning and value, which can be as simple as making sure you spend time helping make life a little better for other people. I
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
Over the past year, I have realized something about myself. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia: I hate being at home by myself. I am a people person. My life has been a magnificent indulgence. I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit? I suppose that I never completely gave up my childhood idea of being a minister. Only the medium and the message changed. I have still endeavored to touch people’s souls, to raise their spirits and put smiles on their faces.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
For all of you out there, visible & invisible. Closeted or out & proud. Femme & Masc & every glorious stripe on the rainbow in between. You incandescent queens, deliciously undefinable androgynous souls, chivalrous butches, tomboy dykes, drop-dead yet still invisible femmes. You with your flare, your flamboyance, your rugged individuality, your glorious diversity, your insistence on being seen, your quiet but steady presence in the places that matter. You, the cliche and every unexpected exception. The world’s stereotypes brought to blazing life & you who smashes the boxes & changes the paradigms & refuses to be painted into place. You, who knows that queer looks, speaks, sounds & moves through this world in a million different ways. You, the grieving. You the dancing. You, the proud & the humble & the defiant & the free. Whatever label you choose & define for yourself. Whatever identity feels like home to you. However you have come to know & name yourself & your good, good, love. You are my family. I see you.
Jeanette LeBlanc
Once upon the dawn of time, there was water. Before the stars, before the Maker set life into earth, life into lungs, beast or man to roam . . . there was water.
Amanda Dykes (All the Lost Places)
He wanted the show to be fresh to audiences 50 years down the line.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
It wasn't work. I played myself.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder. I did have a wild side, and I showed it every time I walked through the front door and my littlest child, Carrie Beth, made me dance to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s hit song “Tijuana Sauerkraut.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
Carl envisioned a show that would be timeless. He wanted it to be fresh to audiences fifty years down the line.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
We called ourselves the Burfords—Reverend Burford, Grandfather Burford, Cousin Burford, and so on.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
Julie’s voice could have been used to tune a piano. She was pitch perfect—and I never was. I was enjoyably close.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
She waves me off easily. “You’re an adult, Fletcher. Live a lot.” I can’t help laughing, still shaking my head at the best woman I’ve ever known. God, do I love her. “The saying is live a little.” “Eh, life is short. Live a lot. Love a lot.
Nicole Dykes (Too Hostile)
That’s the practical joke of life: creation is tough, destruction’s a breeze.
Bryan VanDyke (In Our Likeness)
This river, a blue garment bordered with rich green life in many hues and patterns, now flows twisted and knotted – rumpled with thirty big dams, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams. This is what they have done to the oldest river in the subcontinent, the dyke of whose valley housed the oldest human settlement and gallery in this part of the world, Bhimbetka; the river that nurtures the Satpura forests, the oldest again. They are now talking of interlinking rivers. It is like infusing all blood types into all bodies. It is mass murder.
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam (Finding My Way)
But how have I failed so wretchedly," he asked, "in all the purpose of my life? What could I have done better? What is it that counts here?
Henry Van Dyke (The Mansion)
We formalized our group as the Vantastix and sang at dinner parties and charity events. My favorite venue though, was the City of Hope, where we went room to room singing for kids battling cancer. In 50 plus years of show business, I never had a better audience. Most of those little kids were bald; a fair number could barely sit up in bed and there was a sad handful who could not even do that. We stopped at the bed of a very sick 15-year-old boy. We tiptoed into his room and quietly sang a song; he did not react. Thinking he was asleep, we began to file out but suddenly we hear a thin voice ask, "Could I hear another one, please?" We turned around and sang a whole bunch of songs. He barely opened his eyes. But after we finished Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I saw his mouth curl into a faint smile. As far as I'm concerned, applause does not get any louder.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
The story of a man's life, especially when it is told by the man himself, should not be interrupted by the hecklings of an editor.
J.C. Van Dyke (Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie: With The Gospel of Wealth)
That reminded me of my own fateful story, which I proceeded to tell him.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
One day I noticed that Marty was missing a finger, and I wondered how he could still manage to play complicated pieces. He had lost the finger in an accident, he explained, then retaught himself to
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business)
I don’t want to connect with him. I don’t want to know his secrets, and I hate that he knows mine.
Nicole Dykes (Guarded (Kensley Panthers #2))
Everything about this feels right. And to me, that can never be wrong.
Nicole Dykes (Guarded (Kensley Panthers #2))
What if they’re in love and happy? Why should that matter to anyone else? Why is it their business? And then I thought about the fact that I’m in love with you, and I want to someday be able to tell everyone. Maybe.
Nicole Dykes (Guarded (Kensley Panthers #2))
She's so near that I feel the heat of her next to me, and I warn myself not to make it more than it is. I haven't done this often, but I've done it enough to know how this ends. All the girls in the rainbow T-shirts who kiss girls to impress boys but would die if anyone called them a dyke. The girls with the careless smiles and thirsty hearts who draw lines only they can see and move goalposts when I'm not looking. All those things said and unsaid, never to be spoken of again. All the times I said "okay" when I really wanted to say "I don’t want to be friends." The ghost girls who are there, then not there, who let themselves give in to that itch of curiosity, just for a moment, and make me feel something, only to conclude that it isn't for them. The ones who are bored or scared or both, who'd rather tell me that they were drunk than let me know that they felt something as well because all they want is a quiet life. Someone they can love without it being brave. Someone they can invite over for Sunday lunch and go with to prom. I am the first and last and nothing in between. The mad one. The wild one. The one who sees things that aren't there. I am to be unloaded on, to be bled on and cried all over. I am the one they experiment with. 'The one they can let go with because I'll never tell. The keeper of secrets and soother of guilt. But I am never the one. I am not to be loved. Not out loud, anyway. Maybe, one day, if I'm lucky, I'll be a what if? Or worse, the one before the one. The one that made them realize that it wasn't just a phase. But, for the most part, I will barelv be a footnote in the book of that quiet life they want so much.
Tanya Byrne (Afterlove)
This episode plays wonderfully on radio because, just as the raft fills the room, so the imaginations of listeners expand to their fullest to visualize the incongruous scene and the expressions on the faces of thunderstruck visitors. “The Curious Thing About Women” episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which Laura Petrie opens a package which contains a life raft, is funny, but the raft doesn’t consume the whole room as the McGee raft extends to all corners of our minds.
Clair Schulz (FIBBER McGEE & MOLLY ON THE AIR, 1935-1959 (REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION))
Hope is Life's essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
I met my agent, Sol Leon, for lunch at the commissary, and talked through my concerns. He asked the obvious questions: What kind of films did I want to make? Where did I see myself going in terms of movies? What sort of scripts should he look for? “I’ve thought about this,” I said, “and I’m pretty clear on it. I only want to make movies that my children can see.” “Only kids’ movies?” he asked. “Not kids’ movies,” I clarified. “I want to make movies that I can see with my kids and not feel uncomfortable.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
I could play many types of characters on camera, but all were, in some way, going to be variations of me, and I was conscious of who I was. I wasn’t a prude or a goody two-shoes, but I was, in many ways, still the boy my mother praised for being good, and though older and more complex, I was content with remaining that good boy. I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
As I’d found time and again throughout my life—and would continue to find—you do what you can, say your prayers, and hope for the best.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
We knew great TV began with great writing, not great acting, and that is a distinction that can’t ever be ignored or underestimated. TV just won’t work any other way. It all starts on the page.
Dick Van Dyke (My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business)
George Alfred Henty (1832–1902), who began his writing career in the 1860s. Henty – educated at Westminster and Caius, Cambridge, the son of a wealthy stockbroker – had been commissioned in the Purveyor’s Department of the army, and gone to the Crimea during the war. There he had drifted into journalism, sending back reports for the Morning Advertiser and the Morning Post before catching fever and being invalided home. He continued to work in the Purveyor’s Department until the mid-Sixties, when the life of the war correspondent and the writer of boys’ adventure stories seemed overwhelmingly more interesting and better paid. Four generations of British children grew up with Henry’s irresistible stories, beautifully produced, bound and edited, on their shelves. The Henty phenomenon – over seventy titles celebrating imperialistic derring-do – really belongs to the 1880s, but deserves a mention here not only because of his radical and political views, but because of the direction taken by his career as a writer. The Henty story, by the time he had got into his stride, followed the formula that a young English lad in his early teens, freed from the shackles of public school or home upbringing by the convenient accident of orphanhood, finds himself caught up in some thrilling historical episode. The temporal sweep is impressive, ranging from Beric at Agincourt to The Briton: a story of the Roman Invasion; but the huge majority are exercises in British imperialist myth-building: By Conduct and Courage, A Story of the Days of Nelson, By Pike and Dyke, By Sheer Pluck, A Tale of the Ashanti War, Condemned as a Nihilist, The Dash for Khartoum, For Name and Fame: or through the Afghan Passes, Jack Archer, A Tale of the Crimea, Through the Sikh War. A Tale of the Punjaub (sic); The Tiger of Mysore, With Buller in Natal, With Kitchener in the Soudan, and so on.
A.N. Wilson (The Victorians)
What do you think? There, isn’t that the finest of negative landscapes? Look, on the left we have that pile of ashes they call a dune here, with the grey dyke on our right, the pallid beach at our feet and, in front of us, the sea, the colour of diluted washing powder, it’s pale waters reflected in the vast sky above. A soft hell, it really is! Nothing but horizontals, no brightness: colourless space and dead life. Is it not universal obliteration, a void perceptible to the eyes? No men, above all, no men! Just you and I, only us, face-to-face with a planet that is finally empty. The sky is alive? You’re right, dear friend. It thickens then sinks back, opens up airy staircases, then closes its doors of cloud.
Albert Camus (The Fall)