12.9.09
“…the view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it’s gone. […] This symbol of American ingenuity and strength… and labor and imagination and commerce and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that.”
—Jon Stewart, in a stirring monologue on The Daily Show following the September 11 attacks
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23.7.09
“…astronauts went on a space walk today to change the batteries on the outside of the International Space Station. They hope the spacewalk will answer some key questions, like who put the battery thing on the outside? It’s in space, you moron! Put the battery thing on the inside!”
—Craig Ferguson, as heard on The Late Late Show
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21.6.09
“Some people are toxic; avoid them. […] There is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.”
—Milton Glaser on what he has learnt
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22.5.09
“New rule: since viruses like swine flu get to be potentially deadly because they’d evolved, if you don’t believe in evolution and you get it, you have to pray it away. You can’t crap all over Darwin and stem cell research and global warming and then come crawling back to science when you want Tamiflu – that’s for us sinners.”
—Bill Maher, as heard on Real Time With Bill Maher
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6.4.09
“I feel like whether you like him or not, Bush seems like a fun guy. He’s that guy you invite to the barbecue because you know he’ll start the Wiffleball game – he’s like Wiffleball Tony. You’re like: “Yeah, Wiffleball Tony’s here! Alright, alright, this is cool!” And then one day somebody’s like: “We’re going to put Tony in charge of everything.” And I’m like: “We are?” I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, because he’s very competitive – he starts going to the neighbour’s lawn, challenging them to Wiffleball games. He’s like: “I hear you wanna play Wiffleball, bitches!” And they’re like: “We never said that.” But then he starts chucking hamburgers at them. We’re like: “Tony, what are you doing, man?” And he’s like: “They were going to chuck hamburgers at me!” But then it turns out they don’t even have hamburgers! They have hotdogs but they only throw them at each other, so it’s cool.”
—Comedian Mike Birbiglia on the former U.S. President, as heard on a Comedy Central special
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2.4.09
“…MTV – you know, Music Television – they’re putting actual music videos back on their network. If it works Fox News says they’re gonna start doing actual news as well.”
—Craig Ferguson, as heard on The Late Late Show
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23.3.09
“…I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative, but what we do know is: if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity; they have become frightened of being wrong. […] We’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make, and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said: ‘All children are born artists. The problem is how to remain an artist as we grow up.’ I believe passionately that we don’t grow into creativity; we grow out of it – or, rather, that we get educated out of it.”
—Sir Ken Robinson on creativity in education, as heard at TED
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17.3.09
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
—Pablo Picasso
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15.3.09
“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatise, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.”
—Paul Rand, in Design, Form and Chaos
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14.3.09
“CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people that believe that there are two markets. One, that has been sold to us as long term. Put your money in 401(k)s, put your money in pensions, and just leave it there. Don’t worry about it, it’s all doing fine. Then there is this other market – this real market that’s occurring in the back room, where giant piles of money are going in and out, and people are trading them, and it’s transactional and it’s fast. But it’s dangerous, it’s ethically dubious, and it hurts that long-term market. So what it feels like to us – and I’m speaking purely as a layman – it feels like we are capitalising your adventure by our pension and our hard earned [money] – and that it is a game that you know is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn’t happening.”
—Jon Stewart in a scathing takedown of CNBC and Jim Cramer, as heard on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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10.3.09
“The definition of a good job is: if you can afford to – if money wasn’t an issue – would you be doing that same work? If you would, you’ve got a great job.”
—David Carson, as heard at TED
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27.2.09
“It’s important sometimes to be reminded that it’s okay to admire. To praise. To enjoy yourself. To admit to having a good time. To not care about what other, snarkier, people might say. I need to keep in mind the words of Robert Warshow I like to quote: A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man. I watched the Oscar program. I thought it was the best I’ve seen. So that’s what I think, and if you don’t agree, you can go snark yourself.”
—Roger Ebert, in a thoughtful response to snarky remarks over the recent Oscars telecast
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23.2.09
“Sometimes they’re coming so fast there’s not enough to catch them in. And other days you have to do a rain dance for it. You wait. I’ve got tape recorders all over the house. I can scribble notes on a napkin. But what I’ve really done is learn to exercise my memory. If I have a melody in my head, my challenge is to keep it in my head all day. And then try to sit down to dinner, forget it and then go back in the car and see if I can remember it again. I think if this is a really good melody it’ll never leave me. Some you lose. A lot of them get away. Those are the best songs, the ones that got away.”
—Tom Waits, in a New York Times profile from 2002
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22.2.09
“I’m a little nervous tonight. We started 16 years ago with Politically Incorrect in 1993, and moved over here to HBO with Real Time in 2003. In all those years, I’ve never done a monologue when the President is neither a horny hillbilly nor an illiterate dumbass. This is challenging.”
—Bill Maher, as heard on Real Time With Bill Maher
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12.2.09
“…when I first started telling people that I wanted to be a writer, I was met with this same kind of fear-based reaction. People would say, ‘Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to have any success? Aren’t you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing ever’s going to come of it and you’re going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with the bitter ash of failure?’ The short answer to all those questions is ‘Yes.’ – I am afraid of all those things.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, as heard at TED
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2.2.09
“Unless you can begin with an interesting problem, it is unlikely that you will end up with an interesting solution.”
—Bob Gill, in Graphic Design as a Second Language
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25.1.09
“Step one: You start running. There is no step two.”
—Barney Stinson on running a marathon, as heard on the How I Met Your Mother episode “Lucky Penny”
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17.1.09
“If you get on a plane now and you hear, ‘Hey, it’s Sully Sullenberger,’ you’re like, ‘We’re good… I’ll just put the Xanax back; we’re alright.’ I am in awe of your skills, sir, and congratulations on your heroic work today.”
—Craig Ferguson, as heard on The Late Late Show
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29.12.08
“Every now and then you look and her and go, ‘I think that lady is about exactly as smart as me…’ And that’s not enough; that’s not gonna be enough.”
—Tina Fey on Sarah Palin, as heard on The Late Show
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28.12.08
“During the initial phase of a project it is often more productive to rely on intuition and visual judgement. Once the basic design has been established, a calculated, rational structure may be developed that accommodates all elements originally placed visually.”
—Willi Kunz, in Typography: Macro- and Micro Aesthetics
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