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What I Can't Completely Understand Is Most Other People's Fascination With What The Famous Among Us Do With Their Lips And The Rest Of Their Bodies. Why Do Ordinary People Become The Target Of This Curiosity Simply By Virtue Of The Fact That Other People Recognize Their Names And Faces But Know Nothing Else About Them? Why Do We Care What They Think, What They Wear, What They Eat?

-Alan Alda

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What I Can't Completely

Alan Alda

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What I Can't Completely Understand Is Most Other People's Fascination With What The Famous Among Us Do With Their Lips And The Rest Of Their Bodies. Why Do Ordinary People Become The Target Of This Curiosity Simply By Virtue Of The Fact That Other People Recognize Their Names And Faces But Know Nothing Else About Them? Why Do We Care What They Think, What They Wear, What They Eat?

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It's Not An Epitaph. I Felt I Could Look Back At My Life And Get A Good Story Out Of It. It's A Picture Of Somebody Trying To Figure Things Out. I'm Not Trying To Create Some Impression About Myself. That Doesn't Interest Me.

Musicals Are Hard For Me Because I Got Thrown Out Of The Glee Club In High School, Because I Couldn't Sing In Tune At The Time. I Can Sing In Tune Now, But I Have To Work Really Hard On It To Make Sure That I Don't Exercise One Of My Great Talents, Which Is The Ability To Sing In Three Keys At The Same Time.

What I Can't Completely Understand Is Most Other People's Fascination With What The Famous Among Us Do With Their Lips And The Rest Of Their Bodies. Why Do Ordinary People Become The Target Of This Curiosity Simply By Virtue Of The Fact That Other People Recognize Their Names And Faces But Know Nothing Else About Them? Why Do We Care What They Think, What They Wear, What They Eat?

You Wouldn't Want To Be Called A Sell-out By Selling A Product. Selling Out Was Frowned On, Whereas Now You Can Major In It At Business School.

As An Artist, As An Actor, As A Writer, You Have To Use What's Personal To You. You Have To Be Personal About Your Work; Otherwise, It Doesn't Ring True.

When People Are Laughing, They're Generally Not Killing One Another.

When Your Kids Turn 13, An Alien Being Invades Their Bodies And Doesn't Leave Until They're 20.

When I Studied How To Think In School, I Was Taught That The First Rule Of Logic Was That A Thing Cannot Both Be And Not Be At The Same Time And In The Same Respect. That Last Note, “in The Same Respect,” Says A Lot. As Soon As You Change The Frame Of Reference, You’ve Changed The Truthiness Of A Once Immutable Fact.

During The First Day, Curious At Having Outsiders Among Them, A Long Stream Of Inmates Came Over And Talked With Me. Remarkably, According To What They Told Me, Nearly Every Inmate In The Prison Didn't Do It. Several Thousand People Had Been Locked Up Unjustly And, By An Incredible Coincidence, All In The Same Prison. On The Other Hand, They Knew An Awful Lot About How To Knife Somebody.

Whenever You Wonder About Yourself, Look Up At The Stars Swirling Around In The Heavens And Just Realize How Tiny And Puny They Are. They're Supposed To Be Gigantic Explosions And They're Just These Insignificant Little Dots. If You Step Back From Things Far Enough You Realize How Important And Powerful You Are.

I Have Thought About Punching People Out. Sometimes, I've Thought, 'why Don't I Just Act On That Impulse?' But Then, I've Never Hit Anybody In Anger. Hey! I've Never Hit Anybody For Fun.

I've Never Tried To Manipulate My Image.

Your Assumptions Are Your Windows On The World. Scrub Them Off Every Once In A While Or The Light Won't Come In. If You Challenge Your Own, You Won't Be So Quick To Accept The Unchallenged Assumptions Of Others. You'll Be A Lot Less Likely To Be Caught Up In Bias Or Prejudice Or Be Influenced By People Who Ask You To Hand Over Your Brains, Your Soul Or Your Money Because They Have Everything All Figured Out For You.

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Being Mystified Is A Good Beginning, Because You Won't Do What You've Done Before.

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I Found I Wasn't Asking Good Enough Questions Because I Assumed I Knew Something. I Would Box Them Into A Corner With A Badly Formed Question, And They Didn't Know How To Get Out Of It. Now, I Let Them Take Me Through It Step By Step, And I Listen.

Working On The West Wing Was Similar In Many Ways To My Experience On M*a*s*h, Because You Had People Willing To Work Late At Night To Get It Just Right.

I'm Most At Home On The Stage. I Was Carried Onstage For The First Time When I Was Six Months Old.

After A While I Started To Think Of That As An Image Of Something That Went A Lot Deeper Than The Dead Dog, Which Is You Can't Bring Back Anything To Life.

I Really Don't Like Plays Or Movies That Service Propaganda.

I Was Always Interested In Figuring Things Out. I'd Do Experiments, Like Combining Things I Found Around The House To See What Would Happen If I Put Them Together.

Figuring Things

I've Sat Looking Down Into A Volcano That Could Blow At Any Moment; I've Helped Catch A Shark And Several Rattlesnakes; I Let A Tarantula Walk Across My Hand, And I Ate Rat Soup.

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Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

I Found I Wasn't Asking Good Enough Questions Because I Assumed I Knew Something.

How Can I Ever Hope To Communicate Something To You Unless I Get Signals Back From You That I'm On The Right Track Or That I've Started At Some Place That You're Familiar With?

I Wouldn't Live In California. All That Sun Makes You Sterile.

I Was A Child, And My Mother Was Psychotic. She Loved Me, But I Didn't Really Feel I Had A Mother. And When You Live With Somebody Who Is Paranoid And Thinks You're Trying To Kill Them All The Time, You Tend To Feel A Little Betrayed.

I'm In This Wonderful Position Where I Can Do What Interests Me. And Whatever Comes Along That Interests Me, I Do. The Rest Of The Time I Bother Scientists About Communicating.

There Are Two Things That I Get A Lot Of Pleasure From In My Life, And That Is, Doing What I Know How To Do Well - That Really Makes Me Happy. The Other One, And Probably An Equal Pleasure, Is Finding Out How I Can Be Helpful And Then Really Being Helpful.

You Can't Get There By Bus, Only By Hard Work And Risk And By Not Quite Knowing What You're Doing. What You'll Discover Will Be Wonderful. What You'll Discover Will Be Yourself.

Life Is Meaningless Unless You Bring Meaning To It; ... It Is Up To Us To Create Our Own Existence. Unless You Do Something, Unless You Make Something It's As Though You Aren't There.

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I Try To Find Out What There Is In The Character That In A Way, You Can't Put Into Words. If I Could Put It Into Words, Then It Wouldn't Be A Performance. And If I Do Put It Into Words, As I Play It, I Start To Get Boxed In By Those Words.

Laugh At Yourself, But Don't Ever Aim Your Doubt At Yourself.

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Republicans Are As Capable Of Coming Up With Great Ideas And Moving This Country Along As Anyone - They Just Don't Do It.

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War Is War And Hell Is Hell, And If You Ask Me, War Is A Lot Worse.

Be Brave Enough To Live Creatively . . . What You'll Discover Will Be Wonderful: Yourself.

Listening Is Being Able To Be Changed By The Other Person.

My Mother Didn't Try To Stab My Father Until I Was Six, But She Must Have Shown Signs Of Oddness Before That.

It's Too Bad I'm Not As Wonderful A Person As People Say I Am, Because The World Could Use A Few People Like That.

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If I Can't Get The Girl, At Least Give Me More Money.

I Used To Be A Catholic. I Left Because I Object To Conversion By Concussion. If You Don't Agree With What They Teach, You Get Clobbered Over The Head Until You Do. All That Does Is Change The Shape Of The Head.

Loneliness Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be.

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