I don't think that I want to meet any of the icons. I don't think that anybody can quite live up to your expectations.

My earliest acting memory is making up a play for my mom and dad called The Lonesome Baby. I have no idea what The Lonesome Baby was about. I just remember the title. But I'm sure it was an epic.

I found that I could make people laugh doing people like Shirley Bassey. Fortunately it worked.

When I think of Marilyn Monroe, and achieving her sound, I think of having a rather large bust. I think of her physically and I am just able to create her sound, because her physicality was so much to do with her sound.

My own singing voice is not very good and I don't think that anybody really sings in their own voice.

I don't think that I want to meet any of the icons. I don't think that anybody can quite live up to your expectations.

I can't read a note of music. I just do it all from ear.

I think that if you idealise someone for so long, they can only disappoint and I wouldn't want to be disappointed by those people.

I just find it thrilling, especially when I totally lock in to the person that I am doing and I'm really flying... I suppose I am hiding myself when I sing as these other people.

Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.

Mimicking people was something I did already.

I find singing as somebody else very liberating, it just frees me up.

Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Lucas attended a conference on rational expectations at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1973. The day after the conference, I received a call from Pittsburgh.

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.

Holidays in general breed unrealistic expectations. The minute you start wondering, 'is it going to be wonderful enough?,' it never will be.

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.

I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.

They flooded liquidity in the marketplace but the mortgage rate is based much more on expectations of inflation. So if the average investor believes that there is inflation coming, they'll move that rate up.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

I do my best not to have any expectations when I go into a movie because it's not fair.

Dreaming is one thing, and working towards the dream is one thing, but working with expectations in mind is very self-defeating.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not surprising when one deliberately goes against audience expectations.

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

I want to top expectations. I want to blow you away.

I think the President himself is a remarkably intelligent, decent, ethical man. I think he did very well, but I think the job builds up over expectations which all candidates contribute to including this President that simply cannot be fulfilled.

I've always got such high expectations for myself. I'm aware of them, but I can't relax them.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

At MIT, I had the good fortune for seven years to teach network theory, which is basic to many disciplines, to one-third of the undergraduate student body. It was an experiment to see how high we could bring their level of understanding, and it exceeded all of my expectations.

I was grateful to have two weeks to shoot this one scene in Harry Potter. It's a big, big scene, but they have to deliver. And they have high expectations.

We're starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we're allowed to.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes mismatches between old expectations and current realities.

Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.

No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural.

I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people's expectations of me as a comic actor.

I think that sometimes when they see me in a movie they expect me to be something nasty. I mean, I play a lot of villains and you show up and they think maybe... That's why it's good to defy expectations sometimes.

When you make a film like this, you must have the highest expectations of your audience. Having worked in situations where we have the lowest expectations of our audience.

At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences.

And indeed if you think you're a genius at something, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.

If you're not just a little bit nervous before a match, you probably don't have the expectations of yourself that you should have.

High expectations are the key to everything.

Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.

It's always good to have no expectations when you see a film. Then you can be pleasantly disappointed or surprised.

I think the media makes it tough to play in New York. There are so many papers and TV channels covering the Knicks and the expectations for the Knicks are so high.

You can't base your life on other people's expectations.