Dan Simmons Quotes

I am a passionate, committed composer, and the guy I used to write musicals with, once he was able to ditch me and get a better composer, actually won the Tony.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

When I was right out of college, I felt competitive with some of the guys in my class over career stuff.

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.

I wouldn't date an actress. There's only room for one actor in my life and I'm it. Too difficult. On the one hand, they understand the job. But on the other hand, it's very competitive within the relationship. Two actors, say one becomes a mega-star and the other doesn't.

Comics don't like to see other comics do well.

Whenever you manage more than 100 attorneys, there's always going to be attorneys who believe that someone isn't as good as they are.

You have to be competitive in the job I am in.

I didn't have any friends when I was at Radio 1. I didn't hang out with anyone and I didn't hang around after work. The other DJs hated me because first I was given the 'Breakfast Show,' and then I got on television.

Merle Haggard once said, 'I'm really mad at Glen Campbell because he's the most talented human being in the world.' That kind of summed it up. Merle didn't miss!

Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.

Eat your heart out, Rowling. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don't have readers like these.

It's impossible for me, without getting a big wide shot of Manhattan, to convince people that it's another day. But if we go to a commercial and we come up and people are in different clothes, you know it's another day.

When I started out, some women comics were jealous of other women comics, thinking, "If she gets "The Tonight Show," I can't." My philosophy always was, "If she did, I can too."

Our global corporate investment bank competes with Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and a bunch of other banks that are in those businesses. We may have slightly different products or services, but so what? That's always been true in American business.

The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.

Every woman has a different metabolism and different genetics, so rather than compete with one another, concentrate on yourself and be the best you can be.

My least favorite photographer to have would be myself. Someone who wanted a career at National Geographic. Because it's almost mathematically impossible to achieve that.

Close girlfriends I don't have necessarily, as an actress. Perhaps there is a thing of competition there, you know, when you're doing the same things, and you're the same age. I could be with younger actors, but woman of my age probably - there is and there isn't, one doesn't like to think of it, but I think there is a sense of competition. Which is good, also.

In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.

Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

I was kind of a little disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty (Martin Scorsese) and me. I have the greatest respect for him and all the films he's done over the years.