Dick Gregory Quotes
American - Comedian Born: October 12, 1932

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.
Dick Gregory

When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.
Dick Gregory

People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.
Dick Gregory

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.
Dick Gregory

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.
Dick Gregory

There's a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.
Dick Gregory

If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the tanks to control you.
Dick Gregory

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.
Dick Gregory

Coconut milk is the only thing on this planet that comes identically to mother's milk.
Dick Gregory

There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.
Dick Gregory

In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.
Dick Gregory

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.
Dick Gregory

Now here's what I'm saying: I've always believed that every other month we hear about compromisation of bank records, I think that's the CIA and the FBI. Now let me tell you why I'm saying this. I don't believe no insignificant pip-squeak is going to be able to pull this off month after month and we can't find out what's going on.
Dick Gregory

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn't have what I wanted.
Dick Gregory

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
Dick Gregory

We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class.
Dick Gregory

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.
Dick Gregory

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.
Dick Gregory

Every holiday on the calendar, I check in a hotel and fast - I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't talk.
Dick Gregory

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.
Dick Gregory

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don't have the ability to be lovable.
Dick Gregory

Once I realised the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.
Dick Gregory

I never thought I'd see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so, than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we was in Mississippi.
Dick Gregory

I went to Ethiopia, and it dawned on me that you can tell a starving, malnourished person because they've got a bloated belly and a bald head. And I realized that if you come through any American airport and see businessmen running through with bloated bellies and bald heads, that's malnutrition, too.
Dick Gregory

And we love to dance, especially that new one called the Civil War Twist. The Northern part of you stands still while the Southern part tries to secede.
Dick Gregory

When I go through the airport and see white women walking through the airport barefooted, like athlete's feet don't exist, there's something wrong.
Dick Gregory

If you take 12 waters from the coconut - not the ones you buy in the store, although that's good - but the fresh coconuts, the little brown ones with the three eyes, if you take 12 of those within 24 hours, your blood will go back to the way it was when you were born.
Dick Gregory

You hear entertainers all the time, saying, 'If I couldn't get paid for this, I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say, 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I'd do it for free'?
Dick Gregory

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
Dick Gregory

It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn't stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.
Dick Gregory

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.
Dick Gregory

My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian, she would stomp you to death.
Dick Gregory

Everything we do we should look at in terms of millions of people who can't afford it.
Dick Gregory

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that's never been explained.
Dick Gregory

If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.
Dick Gregory

Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.
Dick Gregory

It's cool to be healthy.
Dick Gregory

I wouldn't mind paying taxes - if I knew they were going to a friendly country.
Dick Gregory

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.
Dick Gregory

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.
Dick Gregory

You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We're the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.
Dick Gregory

I'm not a comic. I'm a humorist.
Dick Gregory

I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.'
Dick Gregory

I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'
Dick Gregory

When I first broke through, there was only NBC, CBS and ABC, and they had news in the morning and in the evening - there wasn't no 24-hour news.
Dick Gregory

I buy about $1,500 worth of papers every month. Not that I trust them. I'm looking for the crack in the fabric.
Dick Gregory

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, 'I've been gypped,' or, 'He welshed on the deal.'
Dick Gregory


Anne Perry Quotes
British - Novelist Born: October 12, 1938

We believe world peace is inevitable.
Anne Perry

I am now working on the second WWI story and find the challenge marvelous.
Anne Perry

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.
Anne Perry

I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.
Anne Perry

I think it's a terrible thing to write and not enjoy it. It's a sad thing. But of course a lot of people do work because they need to eat. And we all need to eat, but that's not the only reason to work. You couldn't have paid me not to write.
Anne Perry

I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health.
Anne Perry

I wonder how often in the past I may have missed the good in people because I pre-judged, based on the differences?
Anne Perry

Mystery writers' conventions are usually good, and this one has been excellent and extremely well prepared and thought out in advance. A lot of people have given their time and their skill, and a good deal of wit, and Anchorage has made us extraordinarily welcome.
Anne Perry

Of course there will be disappointments and the way will not always be as I expected it. But if it seemed easy, then that would be the time to worry that I am on the wrong path.
Anne Perry

The great question, is there anything at all which is worth fighting such a war about, with the devastating loss it will bring? I believe yes, there are some freedoms which to sacrifice would be EVEN worse.
Anne Perry

You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.
Anne Perry


Richard Price Quotes
American - Writer Born: October 12, 1949

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.
Richard Price

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing. Then it's a constant spreading out of that five minutes.
Richard Price

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.
Richard Price

If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.
Richard Price

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.
Richard Price
I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.
Richard Price

I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.
Richard Price

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.
Richard Price

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.
Richard Price

I write because I can't imagine not writing.
Richard Price

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.
Richard Price

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.
Richard Price

The kind of event on a conveyor belt that causes a fire occurs in a variety of industrial environments, not uniquely in coal environments.
Richard Price

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies.
Richard Price