Frank W. Abagnale
Frank W. Abagnale

He understood whatever those hidden mechanisms are that convince people to trust you. I kind of watched him and absorbed what I could from him.

Jack Abbott
Jack Abbott

But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naïve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and

work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.

Randa Abdel-Fattah
Randa Abdel-Fattah

Distance in time has made my voice less contrived and subjective. I don’t feel I’m writing some kind of diary (which I kind of felt I was doing when I was 16). I am far more conscious of my voice and more disciplined in separating myself from my characters…

Abrahám
Abrahám

Wir glauben an Allah und was zu uns herabgesandt worden, und was herabgesandt ward Abraham und Ismael und Isaak und Jakob und (seinen) Kindern, und was gegeben ward Moses und Jesus, und was gegeben ward (allen anderen) Propheten von ihrem Herrn. Wir machen keinen Unterschied zwischen ihnen; und Ihm ergeben wir uns.

J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams

When I was a kid and saw Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope for the first time, it blew my mind and around the same time, I had friends who were huge fans of Star Trek and I don’t know if I was smart enough to get it, or patient enough. What I loved about Star Wars was the visceral energy of it, the clarity of it, the kind of innocence and big heart of it. Star Trek always felt a little bit more

sophisticated and philosophical, debating moral dilemmas and things that were theoretically interesting, but for some reason I couldn’t get on board. It really took working with all these guys and actually working on Star Trek for me to fall in love with that.

Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci

SHELLEY JACKSON: You began as a writer, moved to performance art, then architecture. I’d like to follow the traces of writing through your career, and see whether your late work could be rethought as a radically materialist practice of writing. What made you want to write?
VITO ACCONCI: I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to

go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.

John Adams
John Adams

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the

characters and conduct of their rulers.

Julie Adams
Julie Adams

Oh, it was a real shock when we saw the Creature. And you can see from the pictures in the book that I look a little awestruck, kind of taken aback when I saw it at first. I thought it was quite wonderful, extraordinary, and a little scary which of course is exactly what is was supposed to be.

Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams

One night at the diner over eggs,
Over easy she showed me the length of her legs,
But that gold plated cross on her neck, it was real
And you don't get that kind of money from pushing a meal.

Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison

Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon: cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance. Discretion the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the person who possesses it: cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and

makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done had he passed only for a plain man.