Selected boundaries quotes

1. Art is what you can get away with.

2. I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.

3. Please don't believe everything you hear about me, regardless of how true it may be.

4. Why am I so often at the mercy of those who don't deserve to control my life?

5. You have a right to enjoy life, but only on your own time.

6. Be a good neighbor, and leave me alone.

7. To the Tax Office: All is over between us. Please don't attempt to communicate with me again.

8. I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.

9. Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

10. I don't care! I don't have to show anybody my games just because they're a big shot!

11. My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

12. Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

13. Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

14. My show is my statement. What I have to say is on the screen. My life is my own. I don't want to talk about my private self. Why should I?

15. I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

16. Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.

17. Neither. I did not bring my crown, and the last thing I would want to do is get into politics.

18. For when I gave you an inch, you took an ell.

19. Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

20. Kindness goes a long ways lots of times when it ought to stay at home.

21. May the God of your choice bless and keep you. I respect Him as long as He does not circumcise me anymore.

22. Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.

23. You have to be careful who you let define your good.

24. I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

25. The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.

26. Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.

27. Don't bring negative to my door.

28. I don't talk about political matters. That's not my department.

29. I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.

30. You know, when you have a father who's pretty well known but you don't see him, the last thing you want to do is start talking about him all the time to people.

31. You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.

32. Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.

33. There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?

34. You have to be taught to leave us alone. Leave us alone.

35. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

36. Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

37. Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

38. Sometimes I need what only you can provide -- your absence.

39. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!

40. 'You have babies at home. And you have a life. And if you don't, you have to realize that we're people and that we just need privacy and we need our respect. And those are things that you have to have as a human being.'

41. I will punch you in the face if you don't get off the shed! Now get off the shed, get off the shed! Get off the damn shed!

42. Thou shalt not blow pot-smoke into the face of my pet. Say's whom who want's to get high.

43. 'Why don't I come down there and read that book with you? I can pet you, feel you up like you're my little turtle.' (from 'Super Gay')

44. 'It's time for siesta, you're being silly. Bye!' (from 'Mariposa')

45. I can follow ye nae farther, even if ye suld founder and perish from the way for lack of guidance and counsel. To gang into Rob Roy's country is a mere tempting o' Providence.

46. The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Present no more -

47. So when some man says to me, 'Don't you wish you were beautiful?' those are like killing words. That's my death, if I don't pummel it into his soft, not yet completely formed radio disc jockey skull that I am already beautiful, and I wish for nothing, other than for him to go away. I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. ... You can't even get to me. I got special service, boundaries like the rings of Saturn. I am protected. I am four - five faggots deep all around me, who don't see your name on the list, who will not let you in here looking like that, who will hold you in a cold, hard, unflinching stare or back hand compliment you until you cry. ... If you even had the courage to ask me out you would have to do it by mail, sent months in advance, on a single 5 by 7 sheet of eggshell vellum, signed in blood and sealed in gold and scented with a light mist of the new fragrance by alan cumming, just so I could throw it away without becoming repulsed.

48. Don't flaunt your ignorance or try to insult me. I don't suffer fools gladly and insults irritate me

49. Everybody eats something But you won't eat me You won't get me on your plate Or have me over for tea Everybody lives somewhere Mud hut or igloo But what I got is the hottest spot And it's away from you

50. I'm not a prude, I just want some respect (that's right) So close the door if you want me to respond Cause privacy is my middle name My last name is control No, my first name ain't baby It's Janet - Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty

51. This time around, I'm taking no shit ~This Time Around

52. I'm not a very demanding man. I don't expect perfection from others. I get along and do my part. But when someone treats me like a worm, as if I didn't exist, as if I didn't matter, then I don't forget, no, I never forget, I never forgive, I simply bide my time and then they see: I do matter, and despising me was the gravest error of their lives

53. She never seemed to get near the edge. She lived on other people's edges. And when they fell off, she'd admire how pretty they looked as they fell

54. You must be careful. You must never know things you couldn't possibly know. It makes people upset

55. If you're calling from west of the Rockies... I told you not to, didn't I? Didn't I tell you to leave me alone?

56. Why don't you get a piece of fat and slide off?

57. I think I'll stop here.

58. I am tired of talking.

59. Yes, now bugger off.

60. I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

61. I'm tired of chasing people.

62. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

63. If nobody minds, it doesn't matter.

64. If you marry a man who cheats on his wife, you'll be married to a man who cheats on his wife.

65. You need that guy like a giraffe needs strep throat.

66. And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover, Stoop to become your friend!

67. For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

68. Don't listen, just leave.

69. 'I'm not going to change my ways just to please you, or appease you'

70. 'I was just wondering if you'd come along,hold up my head when my head won't hold on. I'll do the same if the same is what you want. But if not I'll go... I'll go alone'

71. You can do something that walks a line, and invariably, whatever that line is, it will be crossed by people who don't know any better and want to ape the success.

72. That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.

73. Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people - with any situation that's out of control ... Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself.

74. 'A girl can't control who will and who won't fall in love with her, Ethan. And sometimes, when a nuisance person falls in love with you, it can be awfully: awkward.'

75. I am a bandleader and I am a composer. I am not a teacher.

76. Please don't ask me to do that which I've just said I'm not going to do, because you're burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

77. I'll play what you want or I won't play at all.

78. Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.

79. Go, and never darken my towels again.

80. If you fall out of that window and break both your legs, don't come running to me.

81. Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen.

82. I apologize for my terrible interview skills. I wasn't prepared to expose stories about something so special and wonderfully private that is happening in my life. I guess a part of me wishes that I'd never have to and that maybe I could protect this special time. I was dreaming.

83. The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.

84. Rochester: That's for me. I can't stand the sight of blood.

85. I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

86. I've also gotten weird letters, suicide letters, girls threatening to jump if I don't get in touch with them. So you think, 'This is bullshit,' but then you think, 'What if it's not?' Who wants to take that chance? I write them back, tell them to hang in there, if things are that bad, they have to get better. But I'm not altogether stable myself, so who am I to give advice? (1988)

87. I enjoyed acting and I loved the process, but at the same time I hated the celebrity that came with it even though I know it's part of the game and the recognition you need to have people come see your movies. I just couldn't get my head into the place where I could just enjoy the attention and deal with it on that level instead of feeling stalked and paranoid about it. I'm a lot cooler about it now. (2004)

88. Fidelity is important as long as it's pure. But the moment it goes against your insides - if you want to be somewhere else, if she wants to dabble - then you need to make a change. (1998)

89. Barbara Walters: So, Kate, do you even own a skirt? Katharine Hepburn: I own one, Barbara. I shall wear it to your funeral.

90. That's not cheating. People say crazy shit during sex. One time, I called this girl Mom.

91. My fantasies have never been safe ones. Don't fuck with me, unless you understand that.

92. Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. (5.61)

93. The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway. (p.187)

94. Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.[6]

95. Speak up for yourself, or you'll end up a rug.

96. Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

97. Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

98. [hugging Sharon] Merry xmas....now fuck off.

99. I have a message for anyone coming to the Ozzfest this summer (Summer, 2000): If you're planning to jump up onstage during my set, please do not give me any bear hugs, because they fucking hurt. Listen to me, I'm dead serious. On the first night of last year's tour, this enormous guy jumped up onstage and gave me a huge bear hug. He crushed 3 of my ribs and I had to do the whole tour in absolute agony. I couldn't believe it, the first fucking show!

100. I don't say I've got much of a soul, but, such as it is, I'm perfectly satisfied with the little chap. I don't want people fooling about with it. 'Leave it alone,' I say. 'Don't touch it. I like it the way it is.'