I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.
Al Yankovic
About 100 things that your kid will do that will surprise you and break your heart and it will be a combination of fact based therapy, medically advised kinds of passages accompanied by celebrity anecdotes and just some funny stuff to lighten the load.
Alan Thicke
The worst thing that happens to you at college if you fail to get out of bed in time is that you will miss two hours of someone reading scintillating anecdotes about Medieval Ireland. The worst thing that happens to you in life if you fail to get out of bed in time is that you might lose your job as a first responder.
Alexandra Petri
Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
Anita Brookner
Like most people my age, my job is the main focus of my life. I don't have some kind of jet-setting fabulous lifestyle where I'm constantly in situations to acquire amazing anecdotes, that's it.
Anna Paquin
I'm not funny in person. I mean I'm really not. I'm one of those people who always screw up anecdotes.
Bill Bryson
When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.
Cass Sunstein
I haven't got many anecdotes. Maybe I should do something scandalous.
Cate Blanchett
All I've ever ended up with in terms of achievements is the movie, some really stupid anecdotes, a bunch of crosswords that I didn't finish and maybe some old bicycle that I found lying around on set.
Christian Bale
I tell everyone I interact with what I'm working on and let them bring me anecdotes that illustrate my themes.
Chuck Palahniuk
I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or another catches our attention in the media, those strange cases that we end up obsessing about. I'm always influenced by weird anecdotes and news.
Dan Chaon
The 'EU in a Nutshell' is a miscellany of facts and anecdotes about the system which rules us. It's a book you can delve into in pursuit of a particular fact, or crack open for entertainment at virtually any page.
Daniel Hannan
Why should I ever get fed up talking about my father? He was a brilliant, colorful man who left us with thousands of memories. Most people remember his films, but I've got anecdotes and advice and episodes of real life tucked away inside my head.
Danny Huston
Plenty of people are intrigued by their family history. Growing up as the son of West Indian immigrants who moved to London in the 1950s and 60s, I was especially fascinated by anecdotes about the lives of my Guyanese relatives, which seemed a million miles away from Tottenham's Broadwater Farm estate.
David Lammy
When I'm sat in the pub with my mates, they've got their stories: Richard and Tracy have split up, they went to Arsenal and this fight broke out... My anecdotes are like, 'I was in this bar, and Michelle Pfeiffer rang, and I had wax in my ear, so I couldn't hear what she was saying...'
David Thewlis
I was kind of reflecting on my life and certain experiences, and you know, when I'm teaching and coaching my partners on 'Dancing With the Stars,' I sort of use those stories and anecdotes to help them sort of overcome certain fears.
Derek Hough
In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.
Douglas Coupland
I think in Russia, there's a lot of storytelling and anecdotes.
Eugene Mirman
I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That's the joy/horror of stand up - if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it's funny very quickly.
Greg Davies
I don't do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences.
James Rosenquist
I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.
It's usually a jolly good trick to pick up a local tour guide. They can tell you all the anecdotes that make a place interesting. I'm one for rushing off to museums at the crack of dawn, eating fabulous things on terraces for lunch, and enjoying long dinners on balmy evenings.
Coincidence is a recognized element in 'real life.' All of us have anecdotes about those times when, by the merest coincidence, we avoided some disaster or stumbled onto some wonderful experience.
I get verbal diarrhea in the writers' room. I just tell everyone a million anecdotes and stories and craziness, and we all double up on the floor laughing.
Anecdotes are factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss, often set in gilded venues and populated with familiar names as background atmosphere, purged of ambiguity in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing smoothly.
I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes.
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
'The Cauliflower' is full of these bizarre anecdotes, some of them petty, others moving or whimsical, as its many characters try to make sense of the universe in which they live - a universe strange, febrile, and utterly unique.
I'm no good at anecdotes.
Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.
I don't know how to tell a joke. I never tell jokes. I can tell stories that happened to me... anecdotes. But never a joke.
Well, politics is much more severe than entertainment. You have to hit those points, in politics, word for word. You have to remember the date. You have to remember the website. You have to rehearse stories that might be asked, have anecdotes ready for questions that might come up.
And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to like that, you know. But I knew that, 'cause I'd do that in school, but I wouldn't do it out there in front of all them people.
One of our worst traits in journalism is that when we have a narrative in our minds, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it. Thus we managed to portray President Gerald Ford, a first-rate athlete, as a klutz.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have kids if you're going to be a developmental psychologist.
With 'Hollow Circus,' I used a family story that haunted me as a kid, one of those anecdotes about a family member that would rarely be spoken of in front of the children.
Films have to find a way to compress many anecdotes into one, or many events into one. Otherwise there is no way to tell it in two and a half hours.
I can't actually wrap my mind around it easily - I can't really visualize what 2 million books looks like... So I try to keep it real for myself by focusing on individual anecdotes of how my books have helped kids learn to love reading.
As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.
All a Jew has to do is recite a few proverbs or anecdotes to consider himself an expert on 'Jewishness.'
What is a nightstand without Mindy Kaling? I dip into her 'Why Not Me?' when I've had a particularly rough day. Her hilarious observations and anecdotes never fail to cheer me up.
I was extremely honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to visit Oxford University. It was a great experience to share personal anecdotes from my career and my journey and to indulge in a fun interactive session with the students there.
If you look at my Instagram, girls are just beating down my door for tips or a job or mentorship. I can't hire every single one of them. My story is one thing that gives them hope. It's an unconventional story with anecdotes, commonsense advice and a big dose of permission to figure things out for yourself.
Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.
It's much better to wreak havoc on a show and be a maniac than promote myself. Plugs and anecdotes aren't really in line with my beliefs. Besides, if someone sees me on a morning show and thinks, 'That's not funny; this guy is crazy,' then I don't want them to come to the show anyway.
