Selected validation quotes

1. There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

2. To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

3. My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.

4. All I ask of Life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.

5. I'm not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I'm the best. You don't need a match to prove it.

6. The real strong have no need to prove it to the phonies.

7. In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

8. And took for truth the test of ridicule.

9. It is always so, I guess, validating when you meet somebody that you esteem -- and then they turn out to be everything [you thought] and more.

10. With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.

11. Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

12. When history looks back, it will prove what I'll die knowing.

13. I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

14. I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.

15. The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

16. Nobody kicks on being interrupted if it's by applause.

17. A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful.

18. First, I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I'm an actress.

19. Whether they give or refuse, it delights women just the same to have been asked.

20. Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

21. I feel that there are great minds up there who would like to see what I can do with an Oscar nomination. I guess many people would change after a nomination in the way they see things. In my case it's really irrelevant in terms of what I do. Still, it was an incredible experience which I will put in my memories, like everything else.

22. When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

23. Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it's worthwhile to prove that he is himself.

24. It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.

25. A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

26. No one wants advice, only corroboration.

27. 'But I tried though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?'

28. Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste... years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just... take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard.

29. I don't get no respect!!!

30. The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

31. If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

32. The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.

33. Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication.

34. Here's a bumper sticker I'd like to see: 'We are the proud parents of a child whose self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn't need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.'

35. My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about the success.

36. No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't.

37. If you have formed a circle to go into, Go into it yourself and see how you would do.

38. O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause Being for a woman's sake. Enough if the work has seemed, So did she your strength renew, A dream that a lion had dreamed Till the wilderness cried aloud, A secret between you two, Between the proud and the proud. What, still you would have their praise! But here's a haughtier text, The labyrinth of her days That her own strangeness perplexed; And how what her dreaming gave Earned slander, ingratitude, From self-same dolt and knave; Aye, and worse wrong than these. Yet she, singing upon her road, Half lion, half child, is at peace.

39. Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.

40. THE ROCK: 'Before you come in here and start putting little stickers on the Rock's shirt and putting little streamers all over the Rock, the Rock just wants to know-- what is your name?' CLOWN: 'I'm--' ROCK: 'It doesn't MATTER what your name is!' MANKIND: 'Hey, hold it right there! It certainly does matter what her name is, and I'll tell you why! I tried real hard and I went to a lot of expense and time and effort to make this night real special for you! And one by one, you're going to insult my guests and make this night a bad night for me? Sometimes I think you're a very ungrateful little man, Rock!'

41. And this is medicine?

42. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

43. The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

44. We want to be recognized, yes, but not with a glowing epitaph on our tombstone...

45. A lot of times black folks look for love in all the wrong places. You're always looking for somebody to love you, be accepted, and there's the insecurities that are even transmitted through rap. Everyone is trying to aim to please too much.

46. There are too many leaders anointed because they have a public voice - television, radio, or record, or whatever. That even includes myself. In the past, I'd say, 'Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.'

47. I love beautiful women, and beautiful women love me. It has to be both ways.

48. Dear Mary, We all knew you had it in you!

49. 'Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life.'

50. Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.

51. The invisible thing called a Good Name is made up of the breath of numbers that speak well of you.

52. I thank God for the Apollo Theater. When I saw those people, that was the awards.

53. In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

54. 'You don't remember when you was my sweetest? You don't remember I called you Reese's Pieces? 'Cause there's no wrong way to do you know what!'

55. Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one's life, by making inquiries of others.

56. I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they're actually trying to find out, 'Is he as crazy as I am?' I don't need that question answered.

57. By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

58. I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant.

59. Best by test.

60. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

61. Jack's a great musician, and I'm a great actor. It takes a great actor to say Jack Benny is a great musician. ~ Bob Hope

62. Ashlee Simpson told me she had our CD

63. Will it play in Peoria?

64. Am I no a bonny fighter?