Tom Hanks Quotes

It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

Fuck being a good sport, I’d rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.

The desert, when the sun comes up...I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.

So now I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. And tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide will bring in.

Never give up because you never know what the tide will bring in the next day.

It's supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

You learn more from getting your butt kicked than getting it kissed.

I just want somebody I can have a decent conversation with over dinner.” —Tom Hanks, Sleepless in Seattle (1993) 11

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino." - Joe Fox

I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.

Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.

Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.

A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown. Tom Hanks

...childish, selfish, immature - that's right, I am. But do you know how much money I make for thinking this way?

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.

If you're funny, if there's something that makes you laugh, then every day's going to be okay.

I just want somebody I can have a decent conversation with over dinner.” —Tom Hanks, Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

The things that suck still suck, but they're allowed to be happy. And maybe it means so much more that they're happy, knowing that they still carry that sadness with them.

He later underscored how tricky suspect assessment is by pointing out that just based on geographic history and physical description a good EAR-ONS suspect would be Tom Hanks. (Who, it should be emphasized, can be eliminated by the shooting schedule of Bosom Buddies alone).

It was a million tiny things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together... and I knew it.

Everyone thinks of romantic comedies as being these sappy, unrealistic stories where love conquers all and everyone ends up happy at the end. But that's not what her movies were at all. Like, in Sleepless in Seattle, you can't really get any sadder that Tom Hanks missing his dead wife. And in You've Got Mail, Meg Ryan misses her mom and loses her store. None of that gets resolved by the end. It's not like Tom's wife comes back to life, and Meg Ryan still loses the business her mom built.

I'd follow Dean Di Laurentis to the ends of the earth. To the bowels of a volcano, if he asked me to be the Meg Ryan to his Tom Hanks. To fucking Mordor, if he asked me to be the Sam to his Frodo.

Maybe my person and I won’t fit together like two halves of the same whole, but neither did Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail or Sleepless in Seattle. They didn’t erase each other’s pain; they just made it bearable.

Death row is a place for broken people just like Tom Hanks. They can't be fixed, warped all out of shape by the cracks and splinters inside them. And what else can you do with stuff that's broken except throw it in the trash? Right?

Do you really want to kick a guy when he's down? Of course you do. That's when his head is nearest to your foot. You barely have to move it.

Almost the entire world is asleep. Those who are awake live in constant amazement.

The more men I kill, the more far away from home I feel -- Saving Private Ryan

Dead Uncle Steve?” I grit my teeth. “He’s not dead. He looks like Tom Hanks from Castaway, though. Minus the volleyball.

Every day the sun will rise and you never know what the tide will bring in. -Tom Hanks, in the movie 'Castaway'.

Halfway through the tour, we skip out and go to Cafe Lalo instead, determined to sit just where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks did in You’ve Got Mail.

It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.

Tom isn't one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he's scarred all the same having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward.

So I tole him a little bit about my checkered career, an after he listened for a while, Tom Hanks says, "Well, Mr. Gump, you are sure a curious feller. Sounds like somebody ought to make a movie of your life's story.

In New York City real estate parlors took your money and lied to you, drug addicts relieved themselves in plain sight, and the Public Library was closed on Mondays.

But what if I stop giving everyone everything, and then they don’t give me anything back to fill the void?

I settle back in my seat, gazing out the window as we cross the bridge toward New Jersey. I don’t know where the heck he’s taking me, but I’m happy to let him. I’d follow Dean Di Laurentis to the ends of the earth. To the bowels of a volcano, if he asked me to be the Meg Ryan to his Tom Hanks. To fucking Mordor, if he asked me to be the Sam to his Frodo. To— “We’re here,” he announces. I’m jolted out of the most ridiculous train of thought I’ve ever ridden.

Being Anna’s boyfriend was like training to be a Navy SEAL while working full-time in an Amazon fulfillment center in the Oklahoma Panhandle in tornado season. Something was going on every moment of every day. My 2:30 naps were a thing of the past.

Kirk, as his defensive stance, pulled out book after book, reading like he was a chain-smoker with a carton of menthols.

Трябва да продължа да дишам,защото утре слънцето ще изгрее и не се знае какво ще ни донесе прилива

What's normal anyways?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Hank Stamper was, quite intentionally, Captain Marvel. Once known as … Übermensch. The current fantasy …

And every time someone calls me a good sport, all I feel is how much I don’t want to be one. Fuck being a good sport, I’d rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.

So you write to our congressmen With bleeding pens Of the sorrow within And in return they just send Tickets to the latest Tom Hanks show

Did Tom Hanks talk to the volleyball because he'd gone mad, or to stop himself going mad?

Always use a condom, especially in Philadelphia! Have we learned nothing from one of Tom Hanks’s most famed roles? Protect yourself!

This is like a scene in some half-baked romantic comedy, the kind of thing not even Tom Hanks can do much with.

What are you doing?” he asks. “What everyone does in these situations—I’m turning inanimate objects into friends. Tom Hanks had Wilson, and I have Gary.” I hold up the blue nitrile glove I craftily stuffed with cotton balls. With a Sharpie, I drew Gary a face. Lucas smiles for a fraction of a second before turning and shaking his head. “We saw that,” Gary and I say.

The best way to spark conversation is to be specific. Include quirky things that make you stand out. If you say, “I like music,” that doesn’t really tell me anything about you. Cool, who doesn’t? Same with writing that you like travel, food, and laughter. That’s like saying you like Tom Hanks. Yeah, dude, he’s an American hero. Don’t tell me you like to cook; describe to me your signature dish and what makes your Vietnamese soup pho-nomenal. The more specific you are, the more opportunities you give potential matches to connect by commenting on that quirk.

Tom isn't one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he's scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

The air is slightly chilly, but there's a promise in the air. It might be rainy and cold and, okay, it wouldn't be unheard of if it started snowing in April, but warm weather is coming. Things are growing, and I can feel it.

All of us resist growth to some extent. It’s built in; I’m convinced of it. To paraphrase Tom Hanks’s character in the movie A League of Their Own, if growth were easy, everybody would be doing it. But that’s what makes it great.

As I scaled some rocks, I didn’t move out of the way in time as a wave crashed to shore and I got soaked up to my shins in icy water. I could forget about a Russian vor; I was going to look like Tom Hanks in goddamn Cast Away by the time I arrived.

I'm reminded that romance isn't the only great love story of our lives. Sometimes the love we have with our lifelong friends, the ones we can depend on through changes and fights and joys and heartbreaks - sometimes those are the greatest love stories we have.

Kaitlin said, "I'm so sick of that 'Greatest Generation' crap. We finally drove a silver nail through the heart of Generation X, only to have this new monster rear its head. And I'm soooooo sick of Tom Hanks looking earnest all the time. They should make a Tom Hanks movie where Tom kills off Greatest Generation figureheads one by one." Bree arrived on cue: "And then he starts killing other generations. He becomes this supernova of hate--all he wants to do is destroy." "Hate clings to him like a rich, lathery shampoo. His lungs secrete it like anthrax foam." Mom lost it. "Stop it! All of you! Tom Hanks is a fine actor who would never hurt anybody. At least not onscreen." I thought, 'Hey, didn't Tom Hanks mow down half of Chicago in "Road to Perdition?"' Well, whatever.

I’d have bet on seeing Eva Gabor on Forty-Second Street before you. Are you crying?” “No. Yes. Oh, Bobby!” Sue explained: She had been in the city for two months, sleeping on Rebecca’s couch. Her savings were running out. No agents would give her the time of day.

I wonder if anyone will know what I mean when I say that some people make the world seem like a large place filled with different lands, languages and cultures and others make it seem like a small place where a new Tom Hanks movie is being released on video this week

But what finally undid me was when Ariana came whistle-toning in with excitement because she had spent the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house. That was the moment I broke. I couldn’t take it anymore. Music performances and magazine covers…whatever, I’ll get over it. But playing a family game at National Treasure, two-time Academy Award-winner and six-time nominee Tom Hanks’s house? I’m done. From that moment on, I didn’t like her. I couldn’t like her. Pop star success I could handle, but hanging out with Sheriff Woody, with fucking Forrest Gump? This has gone too far.

Border Services and the CBSA responded to a call reporting a man who had jumped a farmer’s fence into Canada with a goose. It has been reported that Mr. Voss was allegedly trying to release the goose, a pet named Tom Hanks, back into Canada, where he felt it belonged because he believed the goose was sad and depressed living in the U.S.

Collins, echoing Ed Catmull, “What separates people is the return on luck, what you do with it when you get it. What matters is how you play the hand you’re dealt.” He continues, “You don’t leave the game, until it’s not your choice. Steve Jobs had great luck at arriving at the birth of an industry. Then he had bad luck in getting booted out. But Steve played whatever hand he was dealt to the best of his ability. Sometimes you create the hand, by giving yourself challenges that will make you stronger, where you don’t even know what’s next. That’s the beauty of the story. Steve’s almost like the Tom Hanks character in Castaway—just keep breathing because you don’t know what the tide will bring in tomorrow.

I try not to judge people who face situations I’ve never faced

Years later, the memories of those weeks were still inside her bones, creating tactile feelings and revered emotions that buzzed like an electric current.

No one in the history of ever has called me chill. I came out of the womb and the doctor was like, ‘Whoa, get this newborn into a baby yoga class, she’s stressed.

you either distract yourself from your pain with over-activity, or you make yourself a home inside your pain cocoon.

I’ll ask him what life has been like for him since he twice crossed the equigravisphere. Does he suffer melancholia on a quiet afternoon, as the world spins on automatic?

that once-splendid cinema palace and watched movies. Now it’s

deal for us as it was for him. Steve Wong’s grandparents were naturalized in the forties. My dad had escaped the low-grade

The tubes have to warm up,” he said. “Does this get shortwave from the Soviet Union?” “How’d you know?” “My grandma had a radio like this.” “So did mine! In fact, that’s it.

Sure, it's absolutely ridiculous to turn down a real-life guy because of a movie star, like saving myself for one of the Jonas Brothers in junior high, but it's how I feel.

In the time I spend lollygagging over my whites and colors, Anna will drywall her attic, prepare her taxes, make her own fresh pasta, and start up a clothing exchange on the Internet.

It doesn’t matter how someone in a romantic comedy affords their absurdly nice house, or whether or not their profession makes sense, or if technically they’re sort of stalking someone they heard on a call-in radio show. What matters is that they have hope. Sure, they find love, but it’s not even about love. It’s the hope that you deserve happiness, and that you won’t be sad forever, and that things will get better. It’s hope that life doesn’t always have to be a miserable slog, that you can find someone to love who understands you and accepts you just as you are.

Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold.

Sweet tea with milk, three Oreos, and Bob Roy’s snug and cozy flat helped Sue breathe deeply for the first time in months. She let out a sigh as big as a cresting wave and leaned back into a chair so soft it put the z in cozy. “Okay,” Bob said. “Tell me everything.” She opened up about, well, everything, cued by Bob’s sympathy. He uttered his support at every story, every anecdote: New York was the only place for Sue to be! Shelley and her “yeah, okay” attitude were to be expected from such a see-you-next-Tuesday! The subway was survivable as long as you never made eye contact with anyone. You found an apartment by reading the Rental classifieds in the Times and The Village Voice, but you had to get them early, at seven in the morning, and then you had to hightail it to the apartments with a bag of donuts because the super would always open up for a pretty girl who shared her donuts.

That’s why it doesn’t bother me when people are rude or snappy or downright insulting; I tell myself, silently, that they’re having the worst day of their life, and I let myself be perhaps the only happy thing they’ll see all day.

Try to imagine what cinema would look like without them. Collaborating with behind-the-camera talents including John Landis, Ivan Reitman, Carl Reiner, and John Hughes-and fellow stars such as Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, and Golden Hawn-this new wave would produce a litany of big, brash blockbusters and evergreen oddities: National Lampoon's Animal House, The Jerk, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, 48 Hrs., Trading Places, The Man with Two Brains, Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Fletch, Coming to America, and Scrooged, to name but some. That list alone makes a compelling case that this period is as good as things have ever gotten for big-screen comedy. Quentin Tarantino certainly thinks so. "I think the '80s is the worst decade, with the '50s being the second worst, in the history of Hollywood," the director said in 2015. "The only movies from the '80s that I find myself really, really hanging on to, oddly enough, are the silly comedies. They're the ones that you have the most affection for.

History in a societal sense doesn't repeat, rather it seems to rhythm. That is due to the conspiring of a few and their conquest to corrupt, conquer and control. The elimination of common sense and the ability to think critically, destroys commutation and ultimately commUNITY!!! -

On the Lights, Tom Sherbourne has plenty of time to think about the war. About the faces, the voices of the blokes who had stood beside him, who saved his life one way or another; the ones whose dying words he heard, and those whose muttered jumbles he couldn’t make out, but who he nodded to anyway. Tom isn’t one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward. He tries not to dwell on it: he’s seen plenty of men turned worse than useless that way. So he gets on with life around the edges of this thing he’s got no name for. When he dreams about those years, the Tom who is experiencing them, the Tom who is there with blood on his hands, is a boy of eight or so. It’s this small boy who’s up against blokes with guns and bayonets, and he’s worried because his school socks have slipped down and he can’t hitch them up because he’ll have to drop his gun to do it, and he’s barely big enough even to hold that. And he can’t find his mother anywhere. Then he wakes and he’s in a place where there’s just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder. If he can only get far enough away—from people, from memory—time will do its job.

Casting people look at your picture, then at you to see if it matches. Are you actually a girl? Do you have blond hair? You sporting a rack of any significance? If you’re what they are looking for, they turn over to your résumé, scan your credits and your lies, then scribble down this magic word: callback.” Bob rolled paper into the old Royal, adjusted the margins and tabs, and within minutes had typed out a crisp, clear, and clean résumé that made Sue look like she was as experienced a dreamer as ever hopped a bus to the big city. She could boast of thirty roles. The one thing missing from the paper was her name at the top.

I was at a party in Beverly Hills, and everyone in sports was there. Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Kareem. And I spotted my idol—Hank Aaron! I walked up to him and introduced myself. He said, “I know who you are. You made a great decision going to the USFL.” I was shocked. Then he leaned in and whispered, “Tom, you always have to get the money. Get the fucking money. Because they don’t care about you.” —Tom Ramsey, quarterback, Los Angeles Express

Ryan was complex—he was big-hearted and caring but also resolute and direct. He once e-mailed me an audio clip of a television news interview he gave after a group of Navy SEALs rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama tanker ship. Pirates had taken the ship and the captain hostage off the coast of Somalia, Africa. The story was later made into the film Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. A team of Navy SEAL snipers shot and killed all but one of the hostage takers, who had placed themselves and their hostage in a desperate situation. Ryan told the TV reporter, “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.”1 I understood exactly what Ryan meant—there was no diplomatic or political solution to the crisis, and allowing pirates to take American vessels and crews hostage would set a bad precedent in other parts of the globe. Weeks before, in fact, the pirates had killed other hostages. Ryan’s statement was in no way meant to be bravado; he was merely conveying the fact that many times violence brings about a successful conclusion to a hostage crisis. The SEALs spoke the only language that the Somali pirates understood: violence. Apparently, the SEALs’ response acted as a deterrent, since the Somali pirates have consequently stayed clear of US flagged vessels. Chris Kyle later turned Ryan’s statement into a patch he wore on his hat.

Sue stepped into a haven that smelled of candles and lemon-scented dish soap, a cabinet of curiosities, one of which was the bathtub smack dab in the middle of the small kitchen. Bob Roy’s railroad flat was four tight, connected rooms, each stuffed with koombies, knickknacks, doodads, furniture pieces of any style, shelves, books, photos in frames, trophies bought from flea markets, old records, small lamps, and calendars from decades before. “I know,” he said. “It looks like I sell magic potions in here, like I’m an animated badger from a Disney cartoon.” He lit a burner on the stove with a huge kitchen match, then filled a shiny, Olde English–style kettle with water from the tap. As he prepared cups on a tray he said, “Tea in minutes, titmouse. Make a home for yourself.

Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.” In order to evoke the spirit of Dead Poets Society, Clow and Jobs wanted to get Robin Williams to read the narration. His agent said that Williams didn’t do ads, so Jobs tried to call him directly. He got through to Williams’s wife, who would not let him talk to the actor because she knew how persuasive he could be. They also considered Maya Angelou and Tom Hanks. At a fund-raising dinner featuring Bill Clinton that fall, Jobs pulled the president aside and asked him to telephone Hanks to talk him into it, but the president pocket-vetoed the request. They ended up with Richard Dreyfuss, who was a dedicated Apple fan. In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most memorable print campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white portrait of an iconic historical figure with just the Apple logo and the words “Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly engaging was that the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon, Dylan, Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others caused people to pause, puzzle, and maybe ask a friend to put a name to the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard Feynman, Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart. Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who had taken risks, defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a different way.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

My mother worked as a saleslady at the well-known Five Corner bakery in Journal Square during the day. Her orders were that I do at least one page of homework for every one of my subjects before she came home. It didn’t matter what my teachers would assign, those were her rules and I didn’t dare to violate them! However, I usually allowed others to make the rules and then decide whether I would follow them. Turning on our small Bakelite radio, I would ignore my mother’s rules and listen to my favorite adventure shows. “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, Superman, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound, and Tom Mix were my favorite daily half-hour radio programs during the week. Tom Mix was forever solving some mystery that I could help him with, since I had a decoder badge that cost only 10 cents, along with a box top from a Ralston Purina’s “Wheat Chex” cereal box. Since it tasted like straw, wanting to get a decoder badge was the only way I would eat this blah cereal for breakfast. The radio shows were way too exciting, and my homework always took second place. When my mother finally came home and saw that I had not done my work, she would get quite upset and make me do twice as much, seated at the kitchen table where she could keep her eye on me. Being under her direct supervision wasn’t much fun, but I would sit there until she was satisfied that I had finished my assignments. My mother showed no mercy! If my father found out about my being lax, there would be hell to pay! For whatever reason, I never seemed to learn…. Oh, woe is me, woe is me…. I was in trouble again… No, I was still in trouble!

Tom Hanks isn’t a person so much as he is a representation of the kind of man I deserve, as

didn’t have anything to do after I hung up my graduation robe in the closet, but I knew one thing: Tom Hanks would be able to solve this. Again, not Tom Hanks himself, although he does seem like a very smart man, and I’m sure that if he can write a short-story collection or direct the film That Thing You Do! then he could probably figure out a way to fix my life.

Tom,

By my early twenties, I was still devoted to heroic woman stories, but the love narratives had started to lose some of their appeal. The release of a new Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle seemed far less interesting to me than the latest installment of the Alien movie franchise. Had I lost interest in romance? Far from it. In fact, this was at the time in my life when I was very serious about finding a great love. However, I was also struggling to be my own person, to understand my identity, to follow my own dreams and start down my chosen career path. I had plans to travel the world, to attend graduate school. I was coming into—and exercising—my own forms of strength and independence. But I was tired of the one-sided representations of male-identified characters doing this, of feeling that only one version of this kind of empowerment existed. I wanted balance and social justice. I wanted to see more evidence of women on screen doing the same, women making a difference, doing something amazing, and being the heroes of their own lives and stories. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many female-bodied characters who did that who also got to find love. In fact, the more romance a woman enjoyed in a narrative, the less strength or independence of any kind she expressed in the story, especially before the last two decades. (3)

Excuse me?" Annie's voice rises, which is unusual for her. She's the queen of avoiding conflict, and I'm not a fan of it either, which means that the one and only serious argument we've ever been in happened in the fourth grade when she insisted that Howie was the cutest Backstreet Boy (a statement that was categorically false).

There’s a part of me that needs to see a world where everything works out for the best,

Life is a risk, and you can’t protect yourself from heartbreak by refusing to go after what you want.

I always think you’re exaggerating, but you’re literally in love with a fictional man.

What matters is that they have hope. Sure, they find love, but it’s not even about love. It’s the hope that you deserve happiness, and that you won’t be sad forever, and that things will get better. It’s hope that life doesn’t always have to be a miserable slog, that you can find someone to love who understands you and accepts you just as you are.

Truly, is there anything more romantic than Tom Hanks on a boat?

It’s ridiculous that someone decided twinkle lights are Christmas only things when desperately need them to get through the bleakness of the post holiday winter... Twinkle lights should be everywhere all the time.

But you’re a hopeless romantic. Love exists for people like you.

I have a theory that you can react to tragedy in one of two ways: you either distract yourself from your pain with over-activity, or you make yourself a home inside your pain cocoon.

Niceness—let’s define it broadly as “deferring immediate self-gratification in favor of the common good”—is a road to building happy families, to making great works of art, to sending human beings to the moon.

I don’t hate any films. Movies are too hard to make to warrant hatred, even when they are turkeys. If a movie is not great, I just wait it out in my seat. It will be over soon enough. Walking out of a movie is a sin.

Making movies is complicated, maddening, highly technical at times, ephemeral and gossamer at others, slow as molasses on a Wednesday but with a gun-to-the-head deadline on a Friday. Imagine a jet plane, the funds for which were held up by Congress, designed by poets, riveted together by musicians, supervised by executives fresh out of business school, to be piloted by wannabes with attention deficiencies. What are the chances that such an aeroplane is going to soar? There you have the making of a movie, at least as I saw it at the Skunk Works.

Objectively, I know that I’m an adult, and I now have a husband, a healthy credit score and a couple of nice handbags, and all the trappings that, if I were a lady in a book, would convince even the casual reader that I’m real – but I still worry that I’m really Tom Hanks in Big, and one day I’ll wake up, brush my teeth and see a child reflected back at me in the bathroom mirror.

You can't break the rules until you follow the rules.

They pay me to wait, honey. I act for free.

TOM HANKS: When Jeffrey Katzenberg called me and said, “Would you be interested in doing a voice for a new project we have?” I said, “Sure, I’ll do it.” “So come on by, and we’ll talk about it.” And what they were doing is talking about Toy Story.

In September 2020, a Daily Kos/Civiqs poll reported that over half of the Republicans surveyed believed either partially or mostly in QAnon’s theories . . . at least the theories they were aware of. Because tumble further down the QAnon rabbit hole, and you’ll find Satanic Panic–esque, flagrantly fascist beliefs that not every subscriber even knows about (at least not at first): theories about Jeffrey Epstein co-conspiring with Tom Hanks to molest hordes of minors, Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of children in order to prolong her life, the Rothschilds running a centuries-old ring of Satan worshippers, and beyond. But QAnon quickly grew to encapsulate much more than stereotypical far-right extremists. Take a soft turn to the left, and you’ll find a more outwardly palatable denomination of conspiritualists whose paranoias might be slightly less focused on Hillary Clinton worshipping Satan and more on Big Pharma forcing evil Western medicine on them and their kids. These believers wield a slightly different glossary of loaded terms, some co-opted from feminist politics—like “forced penetration” (which conflates vaccination with sexual assault) and “my body, my choice” (an antivaxx/anti-mask slogan purloined from the pro-choice movement). Because social media algorithms track people’s keywords in order to feed them only what they’re already interested in, a sprawling spiderweb of customized QAnon offshoots was able to form.

One day a fellow named Mike was telling me about renting the video Forrest Gump. “Boy, it was great!” he exclaimed. “Tom Hanks was brilliant, which is why he won the Oscar for Best Actor. I laughed and cried all the way through it. I know Brenda and you rent good movies for your kids. You should get this one. It was really clean and wholesome.” “Oh, I can’t watch Forrest Gump with my kids. In fact, I can’t even watch that myself, Mike,” I responded. Taken aback, Mike asked, “Why? It was a great movie!” “Well, do you remember that scene at the beginning where Sally Field has sex with the principal to get her son into the ‘right’ school?” “Uh…” “And how about the bare breasts at the New Year’s party? The nude on-stage guitar performance? And in the end, when Forrest finally ‘got the girl’ in the sex scene and she conceived a child out of wedlock? Sure, in the movie, everything worked out nicely for Forrest anyway. But that normally isn’t how life goes in those situations, so I don’t want to teach that to my kids. I don’t want them to hear all that grunting or see the nudity, either.

The cashier, a cute girl in her early twenties, claimed the ice-cream machine was broken, but one smile from Drew and it magically worked.

I never explained the whole D&D thing to him; he probably thinks he’s helping Uncle Don set up for some weird sex party. I just shake my head and give him a look that I hope communicates I’ll explain later. “Sure,” Drew says. “I couldn’t live with myself if Dungeon Master Rick was disappointed.” “He’s a difficult man to please,” Uncle Don says with a sigh, which really doesn’t help the whole “this looks like a sex party” situation.

If cars had names, Uncle Don’s would be Brenda, and she would be a sassy, no-nonsense HR manager. This car, whatever it is, would be named Cristal, and she would probably be an Instagram influencer.

You know how some celebrities age really well? Like, how George Clooney looked so much better by the time he married Amal than he did when he was doing sitcom work in the ’80s? It’s kind of like that. This guy looks like he’ll age well, like a wine or a cheese or a Clooney.

I’m Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, holding Tom Hanks at knifepoint after he’s just compared books to vats of olive oil.

They wanted each other with the bursting passion that spills from the hearts of the young when, separated by time and distance and a global upheaval, they are young no more.

Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX.

There is no substitute for showing up on time, knowing the task at hand, and having an idea that you yourself came up with.

So now, every time she misses work it feels like a personal attack. Every time something exciting happens to her, I feel like she robbed me of having that experience myself. And every time someone calls me a good sport, all I feel is how much I don’t want to be one. Fuck being a good sport, I’d rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.

In the last year, he’d gone from Mommy to Mom, a crossing from baby into boyhood that rendered a tiny rip in Lulu’s heart.

She said movies always started shooting on Wednesdays so that everyone had three days to prove themselves. The incompetents would be fired on Friday night and replaced by Monday. She said that no matter how much you spent on building a bridge, you never owned the river. That Jacques Cousteau helped invent scuba diving.

curiosity fuels you and passion carries you along. Lose either one and you’re done. The moment you react by rote or settle for “good enough” is when you’re out of that line of work.

You said something I have always thought,” Bill said to me when I arrived on the set of Pocket Rockets, somewhere in the endless suburb that is greater Atlanta. “Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold. The worst anyone—especially we who take Fountainfn1—should ever say about someone else’s movie is Well, it was not for me, but, actually, I found it quite good. Damn a film with faint praise, but never, ever say you hate a movie. Anyone who uses the h-word around me is done. Gone. Of course, I wrote and directed Albatross. I may be a bit sensitive.

she’d become a serf of the gig economy by becoming a driver for PONY.

Find a Life, not an Occupation

I’m Laurel,” said a lady who was putting out a serving of tea and snacks. “Hi, Laurie. I’m Ike.” “Laurel. Heard a lot about you, lately.” Wren sat. “You’ve been the lead story here since Thursday. Is sage okay?” She meant the tea. “I’m good with sage.” Laurel asked if he wanted something else to drink, but Ike demurred. “Are you a vegetarian?” “I am not.” Ike looked to Wren, thinking he might need to explain himself. “I do eat many vegetables. Swiss chard. Bok choy. Corn—on the cob or creamed. Kale.” “Radishes?” Wren asked. “You eat radishes?” “I never turn down radishes.” “Yams?” Pause. Pause. “Don’t like yams,” Ike confessed. He wondered if Wren Lane was a vegetarian or a vegan or some combination. If so, what would she think of his dietary practices? Was he suddenly a disappointment to her? New lead story: My Costar Eats Flesh! Was the dinner going to be all natural, garden grown, raw? “Forgive me my distaste of sweet potatoes, too.” “Squash? Squashes in general?” “A zucchini cut thin and well fried. I’m game.” “Well, tonight it’s build your own burger. Laurel can make a beet patty if you don’t want beef. Or turkey, as requested by Al.” “Can’t see beets replacing beef.” “They don’t!” Wren was vehement about that. It was then, right then, that Ike Clipper felt his place on the surface of the planet solidify, sensing an easing to the torque of Earth’s axis.

The movie may indeed have been saved by the change in the cast, as though a volatile, drunken brother-in-law had been disinvited to the family reunion.

If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great!

In the Pre-Adventure room, Bert was rechecked by the

Насколько я мог судить по затылку, лицо Стива смахивало на посмертную маску с открытыми глазами.

There were very few things to do in Toms River, New Jersey, however it was the closest thing resembling civilization near the school. When I wasn’t being restricted to the campus, for one infraction or another, that’s where I would go. Toms River was two and a half miles west of the school. Making the round trip was a five-mile walk, but it was worth it, just to get away. To get there I walked down Prospect Avenue, and then cut corners to Bayside Avenue. In the winter, the frozen snow and ice made the walk cold and miserable. There was always a wind blowing off the river, but I would trudge on relentlessly. The wet slush soaked through my shoes, ruining a shine I had worked on for hours. My feet became wet and frozen, but I pressed on regardless. Eventually I would reach Route 166, which was narrow and only had two lanes; still it was the only north-south highway along the coast at the time. I then crossed the concrete bridge that had a year engraved on it, indicating that it was built as a WPA project during the Great Depression. On the west side of the road was the Toms River Diner. It was classic in appearance and was a warm haven, where I could thaw out. Thelma, the waitress, was always friendly and one of the nicest women I ever knew….

Are you flirting with me?” “No,” Anna said. “I’m propositioning you. Totally different thing. Flirting is fishing. Maybe you hook up, maybe you don’t. Propositioning is the first step in closing a deal.

Sundays when they could come, my mother would bring a piece of cake and some cookies from the bakery. Of course, the cookies and the cake were past their prime, but that was just the way I liked them. I really don’t know how happy my parents were to see me since most of the time they were there; they would talk to my teachers in conference, and then tell me all the things I had supposedly done wrong. Sadly, I would always wind up with a lecture on how bad I had been and what was expected of me. It was something I had grown to expect, but more importantly, I was grateful for the cake and pastries. I have no idea why, but they also brought me cans of condensed milk. I can only guess that they believed that the thick syrupy milk, super saturated with sweet, sweet, sugar, would give me the energy I needed to think better. After one such visit, I made the mistake of leaving my cake unattended. It didn’t take long before it grew legs and ran off. I couldn’t believe that one of my schoolmates would steal my cake, not at a Naval Honor School! Nevertheless, not being able to determine who the villains were, I hatched a plan to catch the culprits the next time around. Some months later when my parents returned to check on my progress, my mother brought me a beautiful double-layer chocolate cake. This time I was ready, having bought all the Ex-Lax the pharmacy in Toms River had on hand. Using a hot plate, I heated the Ex-Lax until it liquefied, and then poured the sticky brown substance all over the cake in a most decorative way. With that, I placed the cake on my desk and invitingly left the door open to my dorm room. I wasn’t away long before this cake also grew legs, and, lo and behold, it also disappeared. The expected happened, and somewhat later I found the culprits in the boys’ bathroom, having a miserable time of it. Laughingly, I identified them as the culprits, but didn’t turn them in. It was enough that I caught them with their pants down!

Керк горячо любил маму и сестер — не меньше, чем саму жизнь, — но давным-давно смирился с тем, что женская половина семьи подобна скрипучему колесу на ухабистой дороге. Отец, вожак прайда, исполнял две обязанности — кормильца и миротворца, причем без выходных. Неудивительно, что серфинг служил ему не только для поддержания физической формы, но и для ментально-астральной терапии. Для Керка этот выезд с отцом обещал стать объединяющим знаком доверия, чисто мужским сговором, именинным объятием с классическими похлопываниями по спине: мол, в курсе только мы двое, ты и я. Назовите хотя бы одну семью, где отцу и сыну не нужны такие моменты. - Родители огорчатся, если я откажусь от своего имени. - По приезде в Нью-Йорк первым делом полагается огорчить родителей. — У меня почерк отвратный, детский, — продолжила она. — Всю мою писанину можно отправлять на психиатрическую экспертизу. Я не из тех, кто печатает между глотками и затяжками. Мне хочется доверить бумаге те немногие истины, до которых я дошла своим умом. Что толку держать дома фортепиано, если на нем не играешь? Оно только собирает пыль, а твою жизнь музыкой не наполняет. - Что правда, то правда. На птичьем дворе последняя курочка - это я. Эти слова легли на душу Берта, как множество лёгких поцелуев. Но "Нью-Йорк, Нью-Йорк" оказался городом без конца и края: он бросал отсвет на небо, золотил низкие облака, пускал по дрожащей воде цветной дым.

The old man blinked at the young lady, "You are seeking permanence." "I guess I am!

His eyes were rolled up into the back of his head as he dreamed he was still in high school, unable to dial the correct combination for his gym locker.

My first game was a 126, then I stopped caring because, well, we had bowled the week before and to my sensibility four games of bowling in one year is a fine total.

Tim doesn’t know about all that. But he does know that Tom knew how lucky these boys are. These ones, he points to the LumberKings on the field trying to warm up, Hank and Sams right in front of us, watching. “Wouldn’t you be them right now if you could?” he asks me. Yes, the answer is yes. If, right now, I was given the chance to drop out of graduate school, tell my girlfriend I would be gone for a while, plan ahead for a five-year cushion of poverty and probable failure into my thirties, I would, without hesitation, abandon any other potential life I’ve worked toward. I would justify it, without a second thought, as the ultimate dream. In the face of such hyperbole, everything else becomes bland and heavy and unnecessary. But just because these players have done what many of us also once wanted to, because they’ve taken ownership of a collective dream, do they deserve to sacrifice for that privilege? The common answer is yes.

Created in 1972 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, two friends in their early twenties, Dungeons and Dragons was an underground phenomenon, particularly on college campuses, thanks to word of mouth and controversy. It achieved urban legend status when a student named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared in the steam tunnels underneath Michigan State University while reportedly reenacting the game; a Tom Hanks movie called Mazes and Monsters was loosely based on the event.

Oh, right. She doesn’t know your secret identity.” Andy unzipped his sweatshirt and tossed it on a chair. “So, Meg Ryan just sent Tom Hanks a book but…” “No, Meg Ryan just sent NY152 a book, which was then overnighted to Tom Hanks, who lives above Meg Ryan and knows she’s Shopgirl, while she has no idea he’s NY152.” “I’m a little disturbed you know that movie so well.” “It was actually a remake of a 1937 play called Parfumerie by Miklós László.” Paul blew out a breath. “And it’s really not as fun as they made it sound.” “But hey, at least you can say you’ve got mail,” Andy said, chuckling.

Frank John Hughes, who played Will Bill Guarnere, had a special duty that required his wearing his uniform/costume off the set. Looking exactly like an American paratrooper of 1944, complete with his set of jump wings, his pant legs bloused into his Corcoran boots, and a Screaming Eagle patch on his shoulder, Hughes reported to Heathrow Airport. * *In uniform, Hughes attracted many looks of admiration, especially from women.

— Knock knock. — Who's there? — Go fuck yourself.

It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.

Is Meg Ryan a frightening woman whose actions—using her journalism job to track down Tom Hanks’s address after hearing him on a radio call-in show, spying on him and his child playing at the

It’s like every bad aspect of my life is a drop in the bucket, and eventually, the bucket is so heavy that I have no choice but to pour it all out in one slightly terrifying but brief cry session.

You wanna be with somebody you can’t stop thinking about. Somebody who takes care of you, even when you’re being a real asshole. Somebody who makes sure you know that you’re the only person they want.

That's the thing about Ohio - winter drags on so long that once mid-March hits, if it's above forty degrees everyone's outside wearing shorts and t-shirts and dining on patios.

She squeals. Like, the response you might give if you were a teenage girl in the late '90s and the Backstreet Boys walked into the room. And list, I'm no Brian Littrell.

Tom Hanks alluded to in his commencement address at Yale University. “Fear,” he told the graduates, “will get the worst of the best of us.

I think NYC comes off way better on TV and in the movies, when a taxi is just a whistle away and superheroes save the day. In the real world (ours) every day in Gotham is a little like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a lot like Baggage Claim after a long, crowded flight.

I’m reminded that romance isn’t the only great love story of our lives. Sometimes the love we have with our lifelong friends, the ones we can depend on through changes and fights and joys and heartbreaks—sometimes those are the greatest love stories we have.

ECM Synchronika.

Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made. It’s the same option for all grown-ups, who have to decide to be one of three types of Americans :those who embrace liberty and freedom for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent.

Would you own a stereo and never listen to records? Typewriters must be used. Like a boat must sail. An airplane h to fly. What good is a piano you never play? It gathers dust and there is no music in your life.

Kenny on MU and, as always,

Making movies is complicated, maddening, highly technical at times, ephemeral and Gossamer at others, slow asthma lalasses on a Wednesday but with a gun to the head deadline on a Friday. Imagine a jet plane, the funds for which were held up by Congress, designed by poets, riveted together by Musicians, supervised by executives fresh out of business school, to be piloted by wannabes with attention Deficiencies.

Making movies is complicated, maddening, highly technical at times, ephemeral and Gossamer at others, slow as molasses on a Wednesday but with a gun to the head deadline on a Friday. Imagine a jet plane, the funds for which were held up by Congress, designed by poets, riveted together by Musicians, supervised by executives fresh out of business school, to be piloted by wannabes with attention Deficiencies.

Are you a clairvoyant?” Bill Johnson asked. “No, Mr. Johnson. I was raised a Baptist.

She found that flying a plane kept her grounded... the sky giving her what no man had ever supplied — a confident safety.

y no me voy a poner a prender y apagar una linterna como Tom Hanks en la película El náufrago o drogarme como Sherlock Holmes o soñar con ovejas eléctricas.

Di Orso Negro espresso

There is something about cute, grinning babies that makes grown-ups say everything in exclamation points!

You know Forrest Gump?" Natalie blinked several times. That was random. Nineties cinema was not a frequent topic of their conversations. "Do you mean that Tom Hanks movie?" Mrs. Kim nodded. "Yeah, I've watched it on TV before." "Well, he was wrong. "Life is not life a box of chocolates. You'd never find a piece of crap in a chocolate box.

credit default swaps?

Fuck being a good sport. I would rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.

Nick exhales, short and frustrated. "I wouldn't be done with you in one night, Chloe. That's the entire problem.

engine, go into a high-rise

There were very few things to do in Toms River, New Jersey, however it was the closest thing resembling civilization near the school. When I wasn’t being restricted to the campus, for one infraction or another, that’s where I would go. Toms River was two and a half miles west of the school. Making the round trip was a five-mile walk, but it was worth it, just to get away. To get there I walked down Prospect Avenue, and then cut corners to Bayside Avenue. In the winter, the frozen snow and ice made the walk cold and miserable. There was always a wind blowing off the river, but I would trudge on relentlessly. The wet slush soaked through my shoes, ruining a shine I had worked on for hours. My feet became wet and frozen, but I pressed on regardless. Eventually I would reach Route 166, which was narrow and only had two lanes; still it was the only north-south highway along the coast at the time. I then crossed the concrete bridge that had a year engraved on it, indicating that it was built as a WPA project during the Great Depression. On the west side of the road was the Toms River Diner. It was classic in appearance and was a warm haven, where I could thaw out. Thelma, the waitress, was always friendly and one of the sexiest women I ever knew. She laughed at my silliness, knew just how much cleavage to show, and moved and turned like a fashion model. There was always “Country Music” playing, especially that of Hank Williams who was Thelma’s favorite. Hey, Good Lookin’, Your Cheatin’ Heart, and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry were all songs he had written and that she sang along with. Thelma knew that I could not keep my eyes off of her, and she enjoyed playing the part, letting me look far down the unbuttoned section of her waitress uniform, while pouring me another cup of coffee. The way she looked over her shoulder, throwing aside her hair while asking what else I wanted, would send shivers down my back and feelings into my loins that set me on fire. Just this alone was worth the five-mile round trip. During warmer weather, the walk was more pleasant, but the constant wind off the Atlantic Ocean and the river, never let up.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) Directed By: Steven Spielberg Starring: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore

Everyone was terrified of Fauci,” says Dr. Fishbein. “He runs the agency like a vindictive dictator. Everyone is frightened of him; everyone knows that you never cross Fauci.” In Farber’s words, “Fishbein became a ‘ghost.’ Nobody addressed him in the corridors, in the elevators, in the cafeteria. ‘There was an active campaign to humiliate me,’ he recalls. ‘It was as if I had AIDS in the early days. I was like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Nobody would come near me.

It’s all sad, Gruney,” Hank said. “If we let ourselves know how sad it really is, there wouldn’t be anything left of us.

I press the back of my wrist to my eyes and blink, hard. “I’m not crying. There’s no crying in cowboying.” “Cute League of Their Own reference,” Cash says, even as his nostrils flare. “But cowboys do cry, Mollie.” “Tom Hanks was so good in that movie.” “Madonna was better.” My heart dips. Of course he’d say that. Goddamn it, this man is relentless today. Makes me cry harder. I’m overwhelmed. I’m so sore, it hurts to breathe. “I love Madonna.” I wipe my nose on my sleeve.

If you have ten grand, set a date and move forward. If Tom Hanks calls you on Sunday and tells you he wants to be in the film, if he’s not there Monday morning, you’re shooting without him.

Three Best Ways to Start a Speech The third best way to start a speech is by using an ‘imagine’ scenario. ‘Imagine a big explosion as you climb up 3000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well, I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting on 1D.’ This is how Ric Elias started his TED talk—‘3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed’1—on the Hudson river landing. This true story was captured in an award-winning film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. The second is to start with a statistic or factoid that shocks. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef, restauranteur and activist who promotes healthy eating among children, started his TED Talk—‘Teach Every Child about Food’2—with ‘Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the food that they eat.’ Given that the audience here was mainly American, there is no way that it didn’t get their attention. The absolutely best way to start a speech—no points for guessing—is with a story, one that is inextricably linked with the topic you are speaking on. ‘I was only four years old when I saw my mother load a washing machine for the very first time in her life. That was a great day for her. My mother and father had been saving money for years to be able to buy that machine

Nolan said, “Higher Love is ultra violent, highly secretive and need to silence me before I expose its leaders and plans. Higher Love’s goal is the overthrow of the US government and its replacement by a military dictatorship. It’s not as unlikely as it sounds given how badly the political system functions these days. Uncovering this organization on behalf of the president is what I’ve done night and day the last two years.” “Hire Dan Brown to write the screenplay,” Mei Ling said. “Maybe you can cast Tom Hanks to play you. You’d like that.

In New York City real estate parlors took your money and lied to you, drug addicts relieved themselves in plain sight, and the Public Library was closed on Mondays. Sue was crying, right there on Forty-Second Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth or, according to the map, the Avenue of the Americas. Sobbing, gasping, tears, the big show.

Until… “Sue Gliebe!” a man’s voice called out. “You little titmouse!” Bob Roy was the only man in the world who called her a titmouse. Bob Roy had been the general business manager of the ACLO but lived in New York City. He was a Theater Professional contracted for the season and a homosexual. He had once been an actor on Broadway and he’d done commercials in the 1960s but went into theater management for steady work. Running the Civic Light Opera out west was a summer camp for him—he did it every year—and took his duties a little less seriously than he did laughing and gossiping.

Most actresses craved such adoration and demanded the largest dressing room, but Sue Gliebe wanted nothing more than to be onstage. After three seasons, she had not changed a whit and Bob Roy loved her all the more.

you can react to tragedy in one of two ways: you either distract yourself from your pain with over-activity, or you make yourself a home inside your pain cocoon.

RAND HOLSTON: Forrest Gump is a movie I am extremely proud of. I represented Wendy Finerman and Steve Tisch, the producers. STEVE TISCH: Gump was ’94 but we set up the project at Warner Bros. in ’85—a nine-year development gestation period. It didn’t hurt that Ovitz wanted Gump to be made. Hanks and Zemeckis were clients. When the head of the most important talent agency in the business at that time says he wants to make something happen and he’s very passionate about making something happen, it’s a lot of wind in your sail. RAND HOLSTON: We had to restructure the deal more than once. The studio decided it wasn’t willing to make the picture for what had been previously discussed, and when they gave us the new number, it was clear the only way to get the film made was taking the principals above the line—Bob Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, Wendy, and Steve—to take less cash up front, and we made sure they were able to get more gross points on the back end. This turned out to be a really good deal for all of them. ROBERT ZEMECKIS: The studio was going to shut the movie down if Tom and I didn’t give our fees back. This was something that they do all the time: There’s forty-eight hours left before you shoot, and they say you’ve got to take X amount of million dollars out of the budget. So we said, “How are we going to do that now? We’ve got to start shooting in forty-eight hours.” And it comes back, “Well, you guys are just going to have to give us back your fees.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? Whenever I’m feeling like I need to prioritize what I’m doing or overthinking a particular situation that is making me anxious, I try to remember this great exchange in the film Bridge of Spies. Tom Hanks, who plays a lawyer, asks his client, who is being accused of being a spy, “Aren’t you worried?” His answer: “Would it help?” I always think, “Would it help?” That is the pivotal question that I ask myself every day. If you put everything through that prism, it is a remarkably effective way to cut through the clutter.

My parents had to work on most weekends, and thus were infrequent visitors to Admiral Farragut Academy. However, on those Sundays when they could come, my mother would bring a cake and some cookies from the bakery. Of course, the cookies and the cake were past their prime, but that was just the way I liked them. I really don’t know how happy my parents were to see me since most of the time they were there; they would talk to my teachers in conference, and then tell me all the things I had supposedly done wrong. Sadly, I would always wind up with a lecture on how bad I had been and what was expected of me. It was something I had grown to expect, but more importantly, I was grateful for the cake and pastries. I have no idea why, but they also brought me cans of condensed milk. I can only guess that they believed that the thick syrupy milk, super saturated with sweet, sweet, sugar, would give me the energy I needed to think better. After one such visit, I made the mistake of leaving my cake unattended. It didn’t take long before it grew legs and ran off. I couldn’t believe that one of my schoolmates would steal my cake, not at a Naval Honor School! Nevertheless, not being able to determine who the villains were, I hatched a plan to catch the culprits the next time around. Some months later when my parents returned to check on my progress, my mother brought me a beautiful double-layer chocolate cake. This time I was ready, having bought all the Ex-Lax the pharmacy in Toms River had on hand. Using a hot plate, I heated the Ex-Lax until it liquefied, and then poured the sticky brown substance all over the cake in a most decorative way. With that, I placed the cake on my desk and invitingly left the door open to my dorm room. I wasn’t away long before this cake also grew legs, and, lo and behold, it also disappeared. The expected happened, and somewhat later I found the culprits in the boys’ bathroom, having a miserable time of it. Laughingly, I identified them as the culprits, but didn’t turn them in. It was enough that I caught them with their pants down!

Half running, with my thumb out, I eventually got to the bridge crossing the Raritan River. Starting across it, I saw a stake-sided farm truck pulling over, and then stop ahead of me. “Where you go’n, sailor?” the driver asked. When I told him “Toms River,” he said that he was going right through there. The truck driver had a rough look about him, but he seemed friendly enough when he asked if I was in the Coast Guard, knowing that USCG sailors travel this way to their Boot Camp in Cape May. “No Sir,” I answered and explained that I was late getting back to Admiral Farragut Academy. “No problem,” he answered. “I’ll get you there!” It wasn’t the nicest truck, or the fastest, but it was a ride. We rumbled through Toms River and Beachwood and then on to Pine Beach, with only minutes to spare. Thanking him, I jumped out of the truck and ran towards Dupont Hall to check in. “Who was that?” one of the cadets asked, as I opened the door. “Oh… Just an Uncle who came to see me,” was the answer I gave as casually as I could….

Michael died on September 3, 2012. At the funeral a week later, I walked behind his casket, shattered, crying, and broken, completely consumed by grief with an emotional intensity I had never experienced before. His memorial service was beautiful and unbearably sad for me. His family and friends, including Tom Hanks and Jay Leno, gave touching eulogies. I received a letter from Trump after the memorial service. In his note, he wrote, “I’m sorry about your loss. I heard Michael was a good guy.” After the memorial, I went home to find his

Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball....there’s no crying in baseball! A League Of Their Own

To circle the globe, a ship needs only a sail, a wheel, a compass, and a clock.

In the real world (ours) every day in Gotham is a little like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a lot like Baggage Claim after a long, crowded flight.

expecting

I can never move out of this place, it would take me years to pack,” Bob called from the kitchen, only eight feet away. “Turn on the radio, would you?” “If I can find it,” Sue said and heard his laugh in response. She had to focus out so much clutter, like she was in a Lost and Found Forgotten by Time, until she saw it. The radio was a blond-wood-paneled box as big as an ice chest, with circular knobs like thick poker chips and four lines of numbers for different frequencies

Do you have any music from the last twenty years?

That’s not the point, okay?” I say, slamming myself down in the chair across from him. “It doesn’t matter how someone in a romantic comedy affords their absurdly nice house, or whether or not their profession makes sense, or if technically they’re sort of stalking someone they heard on a call-in radio show. What matters is that they have hope. Sure, they find love, but it’s not even about love. It’s the hope that you deserve happiness, and that you won’t be sad forever, and that things will get better. It’s hope that life doesn’t always have to be a miserable slog, that you can find someone to love who understands you and accepts you just as you are.

Shakespeare’s young lovers were kids who were in love with the idea of being in love. They took one look at each other and, foom, you had the classic story of star-crossed soul mates.

I’m not saying you have to respect the man,” Bill Johnson said. “But you do have to respect the process.

To make a movie is to stumble around the laboratory and accidentally invent vulcanized rubber or Post-its.

Ride the river like a fallen leaf. What hooey.

Living life is being on a ship at sea. Course corrections are constant.” “Like flying, often,” Wren said. “You should know, yeah. I start by writing down all the Certainties. The obvious stuff.” “Like being contractually required to finish this movie,” Wren said. “Yep,” Ike confirmed. “No matter how sad things are.

Oh yes,’ agreed Smokey. ‘That’s what us screenwriters call a complication, you see. It can’t just be boy meets cigarette machine, falls in love, the end, can it? I mean, who would want to see that? No, you’ve got to have obstacles – like how Romeo and Juliet are from warring families, or how Meg Ryan’s character in Sleepless in Seattle is already engaged when she falls for Tom Hanks, or how she runs a little bookshop in You’ve Got Mail and he runs a big one, or how he’s trapped on a desert island with a volleyball and she isn’t even in that movie. Obstacles, you see. Obstacles.

COVID-19 had been dividing up our country into its Mask/No Mask politics and turned my job into online classes. Then came the Vaccine/Anti-Vax dialectic.

Movies last forever. So do characters in books.

What is she lacking? CERTAINTY. SIGNIFICANCE. SERENITY.

What is her mental/spiritual state? Like everyone—CONFUSED. What is she lacking? CERTAINTY. SIGNIFICANCE. SERENITY. What is she seeking? What everyone seeks—LOVE. REST. SAFETY. What is she fleeing? What everyone flees—LONELINESS. RESPONSIBILITY! What is her most present need?—A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP.

Every woman in the world is tired. Take away Eve’s abilities and you have every woman on the planet. She needs a nap a hell of a lot more than she needs a man.

Wren Lane was a beautiful woman, yes, but long ago, he had learned that beautiful women were a dime a dozen and paid a price for being so. Being beautiful put women in a lofty caste, worshipped no matter the setting yet begrudged for having their lives made easy by their beauty.