“We have literature indicating that overwhelmingly, health is influenced by a very short list of modifiable behaviors topped by three: tobacco use, physical activity and dietary pattern. You could modify those three things; you can change people's fate. I wanted to change those. Smoking cessation, important but relatively simple - a lot of people are working on that. Physical activity: important to me, important to health but also relatively simple. I like nutrition. It's complicated; you really need to learn a lot of stuff to be an expert there.” PeopleImportantLiteratureSimpleFateBehaviorComplicatedSmokingNutritionTobacco Author:David Katz
“Psychotherapy can help some people, especially people who are neurotic, who are always making problems for themselves. We are like a rider on an elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll go where he wants. They need to get a better relationship between the rider and the elephant. In part, you get it just from watching yourself stumble around in life, make mistakes, then read a little psychology and stop blaming yourself. Realize that I am flawed. I am complicated. I am divided, and I'm doing the best I can.” PeopleHelpingProblemDesireRealizingMistakePsychologyBlameBusyComplicatedMaking MistakesFlawedNeuroticPsychotherapy Author:Jonathan Haidt
“Our language was even taken from us. The Irish Gaelic language was outlawed and the religion was outlawed. Hence the religion later being stronger; stronger to a negative point of view. But our venge was, I mean if you listen to Irish language, it's very complicated but it's very poetic.” MeanLanguageTakenNegativeStrongerComplicatedPoint Of ViewPoeticGaelic Author:Gavin Friday
“There is nothing more common than critics of journalists accusing them of practicing journalism. It is our function in the world to take things that are complicated and render them in a form that non-experts can follow and make sense of.” WorldCommonCriticsComplicatedJournalismMake SenseJournalistAccusing Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“If you think about the energy that a rocket engine has to put out and all the fuel and you're sitting on top of like a bomb. And on the Space Shuttle, that big orange tank is filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the white cell rocket boosters on the sides are filled with solid propellant. There's a lot of energy in all those chemicals there and you've got to control it in a way so it doesn't explode. So, there's a lot of plumbing, a lot of valving, a lot of control systems, and it's a very complicated thing. So, how do you bring the price of that down?” ThinkingEnergyComplicatedPlumbing Author:Leroy Chiao
“People who choose to cut their parents out completely are super brave, but it's complicated and for me, I'd rather give the relationship a little bit of a try, however imperfect it is.” PeopleGivingTryingParentCuttingBraveComplicatedImperfect Author:Nicole Georges
“I never feel the need to go out and make some grand statement that I'm dark and twisty and complicated, because I'm not that either. It's just not as simple as ponies and rainbows, though I do love ponies and rainbows.” DarkSimpleComplicatedRainbow Author:Taylor Swift
“It's not often I get to do a film that turns out good. Plus, there just aren't that many great directors out there. There are a thousand different decisions that need to be made with each script and it's the good directors that can make those decisions. It's a long and complicated process in regards to what looks good on paper. Working on a bad film can be fun too. It can be a good exercise that gets you writing.” WritingLongDifferentFilmFunDecisionExerciseComplicated Author:Dean Wareham
“Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons. I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you're gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don't believe that anymore.” PeopleThinkingWorldBelieveReasonSufferingComplicated Author:Bradley Cooper
“I don't think meeting people that I've done pictures of spoils it at all because I like the really human sides of people. To meet them and see that they're complicated and weird or shy or any of those things sort of makes it even better - to know that they can rise above that and make something great.” PeopleThinkingDoneMeetingsComplicatedShySpoilRise Above Author:Elizabeth Peyton
“I could not do what I do if I were not obsessive compulsive to a certain extent. I don't act clinically OCD. I'm not going to check things so many times I have to take drugs for it. But the kind of complicated and painstaking work I have to do to make my drawings, it just kind of harnesses that compulsive energy in a constructive way.” KindEnergyDrugComplicatedObsessiveOcd Author:Alison Bechdel
“Really, the idea of creating consistent quality of a show is complicated. It's not like making refrigerators. There's something very specific to each one of the shows, each episode of each show and that involves a really great team doing great work.” QualityTeamComplicatedConsistentReally GreatGreat Work Author:Jeff Wachtel
“Being a mathematical genius doesn't do you any favors as far as having something to say in music. You see every style as equal, and you want complicated music to devour.” StyleGeniusEqualComplicatedMathematical Author:Chilly Gonzales
“I'm very interested in compassion - compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.” WritingTryingCharacterActionCompassionJudgingOneselfComplicated Author:A.M. Homes
“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.” InspirationalMemoriesComplicatedRelativeTwinsCriminal MindComplicated ThingsRelative TruthBest MemoriesSweet Memories Author:Barbara Kingsolver
“I'm not one of those New Yorkers who so much identifies themselves with the city that they can't imagine living anywhere else. I plan to live a lot of other places, but it is defiantly is a big part of who I am. I have a complicated relationship with it. It has changed so much, but I love it, and it's my home. I'm really glad I grew up there.” HomeImagineChangedComplicatedGlad Author:Gaby Hoffmann
“I don't think I'm a perfect mother. I think I'm trying my best. I think it's complicated, it's difficult. I think I'm learning from my kids so much to be their mother. I don't think you're born a mother, I think you become a mother.” ThinkingTryingKidsMotherDifficultPerfectComplicated Author:Juliette Binoche
“Theresa Rebeck's writing is so scarily funny. I just love how unapologetic she is with her writing: she doesn't try to make her characters likeable or heroic, she just really makes them human. Hopefully, the audience is able to love them in the end - or have whatever feelings that they want to have about all of them - but I love that she doesn't have that agenda. That is something that, as an actress, was really appealing to me; to just get to be in this group of people who are complicated and very human.” PeopleWritingTryingCharacterFeelingsAudienceComplicatedHopefullyHeroicLikeableTheresa Author:Lily Rabe
“I think people are uncomfortable seeing pregnant women, particularly with any kind of conflict. [Pregnancy is] very much a projection of life and love, but it's also very complicated. People have very complicated pregnancies. They could be accidental or people suffer depression, and that was a really interesting thing for me. And a challenging thing. I have not been pregnant. I don't know what that's like, let alone to be really conflicted about it. Acting in the film about pregnancy was a really interesting thing to do.” PeopleThinkingKindFilmSufferingChallengesInterestingActingConflictComplicatedUncomfortablePregnancyPregnantLife And LoveReally InterestingPregnant Women Author:Rose Byrne
“I've always believed that poetry must speak of realities as least as complicated as those spoken of in prose. I've read books of poems, even single poems, which are, for me, at least the equivalent of a short story or a novel. Martin Amis, in an interview with Saul Bellow in the early eighties, quotes Bellow asking, "Why not address 'the mysterious circumstance of being', say what it's like to be alive at this time, on this planet?" This has been and still is my ambition.” BookRealitySpeakNovelCircumstancesAmbitionComplicatedMysteriousProseShort StoryAlways BelieveMy Ambition Author:Lawrence Joseph
“I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.” ArtMomentsAbilityAudienceShareMusicianComplicatedEnvy Author:Todd Haynes
“I received a phone call from my mother, and it was so complicated and involved, and it reminded me of just how it is in a family, and how it is in Mexico, and gossip, and all this stuff. And I thought, well, why can't a documentary be made about gossip? And in that way, I touch upon these other things - identity, cultural identity, and aesthetics.” MotherIdentityComplicatedGossip Author:Lourdes Portillo
“Freedom within any kind of social structure - the whole issue of exactly what the human animal is - is an ongoing preoccupation of mine. And I certainly don't think I've come to the end of that exploration, and with any luck, I never will. But I'm very curious about exactly what kind of beast we are. We're so complicated.” ThinkingKindAnimalLuckComplicatedCuriousBeastExploration Author:Katherine Dunn
“I have complicated feelings about nostalgia. I think that sometimes it can be dangerous. It can airbrush the truth, or fictionalize the truth, which leads to the worst kind of sentimentality. But I'm also a sentimental person who feels quite a bit of nostalgia.” ThinkingKindSometimesFeelingsWorstDangerousComplicatedNostalgiaSentimentalSentimentality Author:Will Sheff
“My therapist says that I choose women that I couldn't possibly succeed in a relationship with because I really want to be alone. Which sounds complicated and convoluted to me, but I don't know. Maybe she's right. There's a part of me that wants that.” SucceedComplicated Author:Steve Earle
“I have the final say in the business side of my boxer's career. But as far as me being in the meetings every day, the back and forth of the paperwork and stuff like that, I have got a job to do. I am in the gym every day. The fighting lifestyle is an unforgiving one. You want to keep yourself as focussed and stress - free as possible. I have a team who focus on the more complicated aspects, on the business side of boxing, which I don't need to get myself involved in. I think I am involved in the business as much as I need to be.” ThinkingFightingFocusTeamStressMeetingsComplicatedLifestyleBoxingGymUnforgivingPaperwork Author:Chris Eubank, Jr.
“I'm doing interviews and there are pictures of my face, so it's not like I'm hiding who I am. As soon as you say what your name is, everybody writes that in every interview, and it kind of annoys me. My name's SOHN. It's not really much more complicated than that, and there are loads of artists in the world who have one-word names. I'd like to somehow be able to close a door somewhere.” WorldWritingKindArtistComplicatedHidingAnnoying Author:SOHN
“I believe we should have a full-court press diplomatic effort. If Trump doesn't want to listen to the experts inside his own government, then go to people outside in think tanks and academia who know about this very complicated region, and particularly North Korea.” PeopleThinkingBelieveI BelieveEffortComplicatedNorth KoreaDiplomatic Author:Hillary Clinton
“Traveling is amazing. You meet so many great, positive people. You get to see new faces all the time. I don't think that loneliness, it's not like you have no one in your life. Well, I'd say it's like . . . you can have everyone you need in your life and still be lonely. Everyone knows that. Being on the road is complicated and shitty; it's also really, really rad.” PeopleThinkingLonelinessLike YouLonelyComplicated Author:How to Dress Well
“Not everyone wants to live forever, but every culture has always desired immortality in one way or another. Humans have always believed in the possibility of another life, of a second act. We've also always hoped that there might be a way to avoid dying. The term "cultural-universal" is a complicated one, but I've heard it come up on numerous occasions while researching immortality.” CultureTermForeverDyingPossibilityComplicatedImmortalityAlways BelieveLive Forever Author:Adam Gollner
“Historical costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries look so complicated, but when you see the patterns, it's very systematic. I've always been impressed by how the patterns economize the fabric.” HistoricalComplicated19th Century Author:Olivier Theyskens
“I think there's an intricacy in doing something that's meant to look really simple and having it actually be quite complicated.” ThinkingSimpleComplicated Author:Thomas S. Tait
“I have always liked kind of outsider characters. In the movies I grew up liking, you had more complicated characters. I don't mean that in a way that makes us better or anything. I just seem to like characters who don't really fit into. You always hear that from the studio: "You have to be able to root for them, they have to be likeable, and the audience has to be able to see themselves in the characters." I feel that's not necessarily true. As long as the character has some type of goal or outlook on the world, or perspective, you can follow that story.” WorldKindMeanLongCharacterGoalAudienceLike YouPerspectiveFitComplicatedOutsidersLikeable Author:Jody Hill
“I encountered Newton when I was growing up, and it has kind of made me who I am, although I came to love Boston. It's a complicated city. Some of the smartest people in the world are in Boston. How many institutions of higher learning are in that one area? It's a pool of intelligence. It's a great town. You can encounter racism anywhere. I have a lot of nostalgic feelings about Boston. It was a cool place to grow up.” PeopleWorldKindFeelingsGrowing UpRacismComplicatedPoolNewtonNostalgic Author:Kasi Lemmons
“The true essence of Chinese culture is sophistication, refinement, the spirit of poetry. The spirit of ink painting and calligraphy lives on forever. Calligraphy is more important than painting. Chinese always consider nature. Man is a very small part of nature. That's why in Chinese painting you see huge mountains and man very small, very humble before nature. You must be harmonious and one with nature. You don't fight it. And then there's a bit of a poetry. Of course, it's very complicated, but also very simple.” MenImportantSpiritCultureFightingSimpleForeverPaintingMountainHumbleComplicatedChineseSophistication Author:Michael Chow
“Surely comics require more effort on the part of the reader than movies or television. I'm always learning new things you can do with comics that wouldn't work in any other medium, and often they require the need to process a lot of dense information. Of course, the trick is to make the complicated seem effortless and spontaneous.” EffortComplicatedSpontaneous Author:Daniel Clowes
“Film is a director's medium, and a film set is a complicated military structure - I have to keep reminding myself to stay in my place, or all will burst into chaos.” FilmMilitaryChaosComplicated Author:Daniel Clowes
“I think we obviously need health care. Of course we need health care, but I think that it's gone too far the other way, and I don't understand it. It's gotten so complicated. The minute they made a deal with the drug companies, you know something isn't kosher here.” ThinkingCareDrugComplicatedHealth Care Author:Joan Rivers
“I'm not able to completely escape naturalism. It's very difficult to escape from naturalism without being too dry. That's what I try to do in my cinema - escape naturalism and do films that are, at the same time, realistic but have a lot of fantasy. It's very difficult in cinema to get away from what life is about, from real life. The way the actors work has to be realistic - you can't do Baroque acting - so it's very complicated. And, we're human beings, so we're not perfect. I'm trying to do something different.” TryingDifferentRealFilmDifficultPerfectActingFantasyComplicatedReal LifeGet AwayRealisticBeing RealNot PerfectNaturalismBaroque Author:Philippe Garrel
“I would say that Futurama: Bender's Big Score requires a lot of concentration to watch. It's a very complicated time-travel story. Part of the joke on that was just that the complexity would be over the top. This one is a more straight-forward science-fiction story, I would say. Alien invasion and people running in terror, that kind of thing, with a slight twist of there being an inappropriate physical relationship with the big octopus monster. We've got a straight-up science-fiction movie.” PeopleKindRunningJokesTerrorComplicatedAliensComplexityConcentrationInappropriate Author:David X. Cohen
“Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men.” MenGirlBoysComplicated Author:Maurice Sendak
“If I'm not like my characters, I think just it's like a musician liking to play certain pieces of music rather than others. I just have more satisfaction when playing complicated things rather than some of your more straightforward, simple moments. . . . I like to be challenged.” ThinkingMomentsCharacterSimpleMusicianComplicatedStraightforward Author:Elisabeth Moss
“Anytime you have a female protagonist, it's going to turn into some feminist angle, and it's not a conscious thing on my part. It's only recently that that's been pointed out by the media . . . or pointed out by fans. I also find complicated, flawed characters interesting. What's the opposite? To play one-dimensional, boring failures?” CharacterInterestingConsciousFemaleFeministBoringComplicatedFlawed Author:Elisabeth Moss
“I am an artist. For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.” KindArtSoulActionArtistIntellectualMiraclePossessionComplicatedYour SoulUnconscious Author:Alejandro Jodorowsky
“I love doing movies, but right now, television is the way Hollywood was in the late '60s and early '70s. The dream era I would have loved to have been part of in Hollywood then is happening right now, but it's happening on television, with these big complicated story arcs and real character-driven shows and sheer ambiguity left and right.” RealDreamComplicatedAmbiguity Author:Patton Oswalt
“As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.” GivingWritingMeanArtDifferentReasonRealityArtistFightingNovelRacismComplicatedPoint Of ViewLoyaltyVotingYes Or No Author:Margaret Atwood
“The processes of secularization that followed in the wake of the Reformation continue to work themselves out in complicated ways, not only in Europe but also in North America. To make a very long and complex story short, the success of the Reformation combined with the persistence and renewal of Roman Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries made Christianity into an enduring, disruptive problem in new ways, layered on top of problems that already affected late medieval Christianity.” LongProblemChristianityEndureComplicatedPersistenceCatholicismRenewalMedievalRoman Catholic Author:Brad Stephan Gregory
“Khodorkovsky is richest man. And he lost everything when Putin arrested him and took his company away, and essentially took his company away, sold it, and gave it to other people, and enriched them. So, he's a complicated figure as an opposition leader, and people admire him - he was in prison, and he was very brave, and he's written some good things since then, and so on. But at the end of the day, people see him as being part of the corrupt system that has done so much to undermine the Russian system since the 1990s, and I don't know that he can ever be a really popular leader.” PeopleMenDoneLeaderPrisonBraveGood ThingsComplicatedAdmire Author:Anne Applebaum
“I think women are not interested in being like "the man" or having the same position as "the man." Women want to be women with equal rights. At this point now, we're very clear about that. I don't want to be the same as him. I want to be me with the same opportunity. So I think that's the difference of today than the fight that my mom had to fight, which was a little bit different and as complicated.” ThinkingMenDifferentTodayFightingOpportunityHe ManMomEqualMy MomComplicatedNot InterestedEqual RightsWomen Want Author:Kate Hudson