When I shake someone's hand, I apply the lightest pressure on their wrist with my index and middle fingers and lead them across my body to my left. The cross-body lead is actually a move from salsa dancing. I'm finding out what kind of a partner they're going to be, and I know that if they follow my lead, I can do whatever I want with them.

Apollo Robbins

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

A. S. Byatt

Don't try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don't ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers... The most valuable thing you have is your own voice.

Aaron Sorkin

I don't get sick much because in the U.S. I always eat with my fingers, you know, to get used to the bacteria.

Abbey Lee Kershaw

On 'Adam Ruins Everything' we do the broadest sketch comedy possible. We do stuff where you can see it immediately and know it's a joke - characters in big silly costumes; here's Uncle Sam and he's twiddling his fingers saying, 'Oh, I'm naughty.'

Adam Conover

Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys. It seemed the harmonious echo from our discordant life.

Adelaide Anne Procter

Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.

Adora Svitak

I'm used to working with a rehearsal process and your body. It's a different thing to just be a voice. It's liberating, on one hand, because you get to show up in sweatpants and with Doritos on your fingers, but on the other hand, it's limiting because it's just your voice.

Adrian Pasdar

Basically, if you work hard and practice an instrument every day, you'll learn how to play like a professional. You'll get better and better each day. And that's how it works for me. I wasn't magically inclined to play. I had to keep practicing and practicing to train my fingers.

Adrian Younge

I make documentaries from time to time to remind myself of reality. It's like musicians doing scales to keep their fingers working: when you're in the street, listening to people, you're forced to be in the service of your subject.

Agnes Varda

To have hands, to have fingers, is weird. Real life is weird, to have fingers?

Alejandro Jodorowsky

My friends like to remind me that I have relatively weak fingers. Aerobic strength and general endurance have come easy, but finger strength has always been my biggest weakness.

Alex Honnold

There are times I'm approaching turns with my right hand on the brake lever, I'm downshifting with my fingers, I'm controlling the throttle with my left hand and steering into the corner with only one hand on the wheel. I feel a bit like Jimi Hendrix: I play with both my hands.

Alex Zanardi

A fellow has to have faith in God above and Rollie Fingers in the bullpen.

Alvin Dark

One of the problems trying to play an instrument outside in the cold is your fingers give up on you and you can't wear gloves, even fingerless.

Amy Macdonald

I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad.

Andrew Greeley

You don't want to be a one-trick pony. On a lot of Smiths songs, I used a pick or a plectrum, and for some of the slow songs, I used my thumbs and my fingers. That's why I love the bass - it's adaptable, and you can express yourself so well with it.

Andy Rourke

I was born too late to experience Apollo 11, though I do trek to Dad's house every time there's some space event. There's something awesome about crossing your fingers and watching a tense Mission Control room do their thing.

Andy Weir

I think one of the greatest things about the Republican Party is the understanding, we don't point fingers and we have class.

Angie Harmon

There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.

Anne Enright

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage.

Anne Lamott