personal scrutiny Quotes

No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

I don't think there's much a person could say about me. My gangster's never been on trial.

I’ve never felt that his private life was the way to judge him. We should judge a president by the way he performs as president.

I'm so super-critical of everything that I do.

You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call. And then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis to sort to derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.

Being in the public eye, you can't really avoid a lot of questions. A lot of questions are being thrown at you, whether it's about your personal life or your personal beliefs, and I'm happy to answer them all.

One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.

I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.

When you are a public figure, relationships are a bit complicated.

I'm tired of answering questions about myself.

Losing the presidency is not like losing any other office. More than any other office, it's a vote about you as a whole human being.

for the poor the whole world is a self-constituted critic; your smallest action is open to debate. No secret place of your soul is safe from invasion.

There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.

I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.

I would try to promote something that I loved, and the entire interview would be about my personal life. I would leave a room feeling defeated, feeling embarrassed, but I would always make sure to put that smile on my face because I wasn't going to let them get to me.

I'm living the life I always dreamed of living. From the time I was a youngster I wanted to be a celebrity. It's a great life. The only bad thing is that people are more interested in your personal life than they are in your work and it's freaky

The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.

I hate being interviewed. I'm like, 'Aaaarrgghh!' I don't like talking about myself.

If you run for public office today you must be prepared for a massive invasion of privacy.

I'm very conscious that I've spent my whole adult life in the public eye.

Heterosexual women ask questions that are a lot to do with what I did to my body and what that was like to lose all that weight and so on. To me it just reveals that that's a preoccupation of theirs. Or gay women have been really keen on knowing how I felt about playing a gay character and have often wanted to talk about their own experiences with children. Straight men have often shown some sense of relief, that they get to experience the philanderer as a woman and not have to judge her in the same way. That's fascinating to me.

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic.

Everyone has taste, yet it is more of a taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simple: claims about your attitudes to or achievements in the carnal and financial arenas can be disputed only by your lover and your financial advisers, whereas by making statements about your taste you expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny. Taste is a merciless betrayer of social and cultural attitudes. Thus, while anybody will tell you as much (and perhaps more than) you want to know about their triumphs in bed and at the bank, it is taste that gets people's nerves tingling.

My dad reads everything about me.

I read a lot of biographies, and so much is just so boring or so, like, 'Why did you say that?'