I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.

Alexandra Petri

Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things.

A. A. Gill

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

A. B. Yehoshua

Big Red Machine is really a community effort: I guess it involves almost 30 musicians. It does come out of our friendship, but it's really something that is deeply collaborative.

Aaron Dessner

Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them.

Abbas Kiarostami

My family background was deeply Christian.

Abbe Pierre

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

Abel Ferrara

My observation is that the bias against female child is deeply ingrained, especially in certain parts of India and that it's not just the poor or the uneducated who have this bias, the well-read and the well-to-do also share it.

Abhinav Shukla

I always deeply admire people who can stay still in a room and wait for people to come to them.

Abi Morgan

Sexism is deeply rooted in our history and society that waking up and stepping outside of it is like I'm watching 'Night of the Living Dead Part Two' all day, every day.

Ad-Rock

Deeply consider that it is your duty and interest to read the Holy Scriptures.

Adam Clarke

Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They are known as the HeLa cell line, and they have become deeply involved in all sorts of medical and genetic research - sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Adam Curtis

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.

Adam Michnik

Our failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thus far has been deeply troubling, and our intelligence-gathering process needs thorough and unbiased investigation.

Adam Schiff

I never was deeply interested in any object; I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came at some time - no matter how distant, in some way, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came. And yet, I have always had so little faith. God forgive me.

Adoniram Judson

I spent so long trying to be other people, and it made me really deeply unhappy.

Adwoa Aboah

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

Ahmed Zewail

The Muslim world is deeply hurt by the campaign of violence initiated against our Palestinian brothers.

Ahmet Necdet Sezner

Studying acting has been personally enriching because it has taught me to take the time to imagine what someone else's life experience might be like. To look deeply at how our pasts and the circumstances of our early childhoods mold us as people.

Aja Naomi King

My parents are deeply pious Hindus.

Akhil Sharma

I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me.

Al Jarreau