Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"You want appreciation. Even though you like what's happening now doesn't mean that you still don't want appreciation or greater stimulation. It just means you're not using something in your now as your excuse to not let in all those things that you've been wanting. The perfect creative stance is satisfaction where I am, and eagerness for more."
"- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!? - You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!"
"People grow up learning to be silent about their sexuality, so where are they going to learn to talk about it when they are in a relationship? Shame, guilt, ignorance, reservation, prudishness, all kinds of different cultural systems and social stereotypes shroud sexuality in secrecy and in silence. And there's the romantic notion. "If I say in the beginning, that I am missing something, you are instantly going to think that means you are not enough.""
"Many couples have never had a conversation about sexuality and sexual boundaries. The presence or lack of sex, the quality of it, the satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the unmet needs. An affair upsets the status quo by not only bringing the subject of sexuality to the forefront but every other aspect of their relationship as well. An affair yields conversation that should have happened in the beginning, but that people were afraid to have because, well, what would that mean about their relationship?"
"One of the big misconceptions is that affairs or trysts are flings about sex. And sometimes they are, but much more often they are about desire. And that is very different. The desire to feel special, to feel seen, to feel appreciated, to be laughed at or with. The desire to be desired. That does not manifest in a sexual act per se. Affairs make you feel alive. Alchemy means it's not about the actual sex, but the sexuality, the energy, the aura. It's the imagination and anticipation of it as much or instead of the actual experience of it."
"I think a lot of the production process is always giving yourself, like what I call like escape routes, like, if this scene doesn't play, if we realize we've had too many dirty scenes in a row, and it's like, because you don't have the luxury when you're in the middle of shooting, to see how these scenes play all in a row, kind of, you know what I mean. So, like we're always trying to like have insurance policies on, ok, if that doesn't work, we can just jump to this thing."
"All men know their children Mean more than life. If childless people sneer- Well, they've less sorrow. But what lonesome luck!"
"I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway."
"The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means."
"And in the mean time my songs will travel, And the devirginated young ladies will enjoy them when they have got over the strangeness"
"Although being economics editor sounds impressive, it does not mean I actually edit anything. It mainly reflects two decades of title-inflation at the BBC, which has given ever more status to senior reporters, presumably because it is cheaper to do that than to offer higher pay."
"The new industries are brainy industries and so-called knowledge workers tend to like to be near other people who are the same. Think of the City of Hollywood. People cluster. This means you have winning regions, such as London and Cambridge, and losing regions. The people who want to be top lawyers in Sunderland are hoovered up by London."
"In France, we have laïcité, which means that atheism is almost our state religion. But I think a very important part of Western culture is in the centuries when Christianism was dominant and was present in almost all works of art - not only liturgical works, but also literature and music. Yes, it's important to have that in our present. It doesn't mean that people have to adhere to a dogma or practice a religion, but it's part of our heritage, and you have to at least try to understand it. Otherwise you can't be a modern person."
"I still wasn't convinced that tossing a shoe didn't mean you harbored an anger-management problem, but I did understand love now. How it wrapped around you and made you more aware of the prickles on your skin, the roots of your hair, the intensity of every touch and every inch of you. It was like life on hi-def. Everything was sharper."
"If you're the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I'm a parent. I have daughters."
"It is completely acceptable to be tired because it means you're working hard. But it's not acceptable to be stressed because that means things are going wrong or your head is broken."
"Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins."
"For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself."
"It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world-Nature-is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it."
"To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want."
