I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation.

Lupe Fiasco

Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.

Aaron Swartz

Great You Writing

I sold a bunch of stuff. I sold Omaha Steaks, vacation packages... the worst, though, was Time Life Books, because no one wants Time Life Books. No one wants an 'Encyclopedia Brittanica' showing up at their house.

Adam DeVine

Time Life Age

I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.

Annie Leibovitz

Love You Us

The architect who first inspired me to follow this profession was Sir John Soane and his Regency home; well, his three homes, now a museum. The place is like an encyclopedia of paintings, antiquities, furniture, sculptures, and drawings.

Anouska Hempel

Home Wings Wing

We are always taking a hard look at how life was in the past in coming up with interesting subject matter for our various series, and remembering how much I used to want an encyclopedia as a kid made me realize wanting a set is very unlikely for teens today, and that conversation would be interesting.

Benny Fine

Teen Life Would

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

Bertrand Russell

Vent Us Unity

I would say my weakness is the political encyclopedia, but I don't think it matters that much for what Trump needs.

Brad Parscale

Would Weakness Weak

I just don't want to stop finding things interesting. I don't want to ever stop learning. I want to be a weird encyclopedia of bizarre knowledge.

Brie Larson

Learning Knowledge Weird

Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too.

Charles Van Doren

World Use Us

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

Charlize Theron

Travel Would World

Can life be defined? Well, how would you go about it? Well, of course, you'd go to Encyclopedia Britannica and open at L. No, of course you don't do that; you put it somewhere in Google. And then you might get something.

Chris Adami

Life You Would

A textbook requires a consistent sense of style and a linear structure, hallmarks of a single authorial presence. An encyclopedia doesn't.

Clive Thompson

Thor Text Tent

In maybe 1963, we had 'Collier's Encyclopedia,' and they sent us their yearly LP. I heard the Beatles talking on there. That was the first time I tried altering my voice, doing a Liverpudlian accent.

Dana Carvey

Time Year Voice

My first biography was 'Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir.' To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedias. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there.

David A. Adler

Life Were Those

I once spent a spent a summer selling encyclopedias door to door.

David Liss

T Summer Sum

You look into an encyclopedia and ask what fighter can do any type of martial art at a high-caliber level, my picture will show up.

Demetrious Johnson

Art You Will

Grizzly Bear's 'Knife' is one of the best videos of all time - everything Encyclopedia Pictura has done is really incredible.

Devendra Banhart

Time Videos Video

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography - Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh, my pantheon of favorite heroes. Then I would write my own things and sew them together and try to make my own book.

Douglas Brinkley

Years Year Write

What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

E. O. Wilson

Life Age Wit

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.

Edward de Bono

Mom Men History

I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships.

George R. R. Martin

I have been collecting recipes and information for over 20 years, but three years ago, my editor said to me, 'You're a walking encyclopedia of food, so why don't you do an encyclopedia?'

Gil Marks

I'm a book guy first, and my education came from two encyclopedias. One was an encyclopedia of health, so I became morbidly obsessed with anatomy, and I thought I had trichinosis, an aneurism, jaundice! And then an encyclopedia of art.

Guillermo del Toro

Many writers were picked on as children. Why? Because they were weird from the get-go. They were often to be found at the back of the class smelling erasers, or talking to caterpillars, or walking down the street with an encyclopedia balanced on their head.

Heather O'Neill

You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.

Henry Louis Gates

While Anurag Kashyap is a very chilled out guy and let his actors pitch in with their ideas, Kamal Haasan is an encyclopedia in himself. Merely listening to him enriches one so much.

Jaideep Ahlawat

I would describe myself as having a healthy income, but I sure wouldn't describe the son of a postmaster and an encyclopedia saleswoman as upper class, by any stretch of the imagination. I would describe myself as decidedly middle class. I think I'm extremely fortunate.

James Carville

Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia.

James Gleick

My job as a DJ and a producer is just to have a big encyclopedia in my head.

Jax Jones

My original concept was to provide a free encyclopedia for every single person in the world.

Jimmy Wales

People take issue with individual aspects of Wikipedia all the time. But it's kind of hard to hate the general idea of a free encyclopedia. It's like hating kittens.

Jimmy Wales

To create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language - That's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal.

Jimmy Wales

The goal is to give people a free encyclopedia to every person in the world, in their own language. Not just in a 'free beer' kind of way, but also in the free speech kind of way.

Jimmy Wales

I had a job once selling encyclopedias, and that was an interesting job because I learned a lot about people's vulnerabilities and how salesmen take advantage of them.

Jon Voight

Me, I'm an encyclopedia. I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.

Jose Andres

The Umbrella Movement can be described as an encyclopedia. Politicians and student leaders wrote it, and let the masses read it and react passively.

Joshua Wong

What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room.

Juan Felipe Herrera

I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.

Karin Slaughter

'Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,' 'The Secret of the Old Clock,' 'Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret,' 'Flowers in the Attic,' 'Gone With the Wind' - these are the books that defined my childhood. They thrilled me. They made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world.

Karin Slaughter

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

Karl Kraus

My father had four jobs every summer. He taught driver's education. He sold World Book Encyclopedias. He sold life insurance. He worked the tobacco market. From the time I was really, really small, I went with him. Obviously, I didn't get paid.

Kelvin Sampson

I swear to you, any question you can have about moves, psychology, gimmicks, the history of Pro Wrestling, he knows. Lance Storm is an encyclopedia of wrestling knowledge.

Laurel Van Ness

Today, I give my daughter what I really didn't have as a kid: all the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia.

Lenny Bruce

People look to 'Dear White People' as an encyclopedia of our culture. But it's also art, and there are characters with different perspectives.

Logan Browning

I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation.

Lupe Fiasco

I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.

Mario Batali

I think - something I learned recently looking up the meaning of ideology. If you look in American encyclopedias, it says, you know, 'Rules for - basic rules for a system of economics or politics.' If you look in the Oxford, it says that, and then it says... 'Despite - and people will hold these propositions despite events.'

Mario Cuomo

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.

Mark Waid

If you think of the ideas of open source applied to information in an encyclopedia, you get to Wikipedia - lots and lots of small contributions that bubble up to something that's meaningful.

Matt Mullenweg

I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.

Mayer Hawthorne