Top 111 Alan Quotes

Alan Moore is a prophetic writer.

Alan Cumming is such an amazing performer and person.

‘We need a guy who plays dodge ball and thinks he’s a pirate – get me Alan Tudyk on the phone!’ Those are the jobs I do.

In crime fiction, I cut my teeth on early Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, and Alan Furst. I always loved the writing of Hemingway and Faulkner. Cormac McCarthy‘s ‘Border Trilogy‘ has been a huge influence; I think I read those novels four times.

Alan Jay Lerner needed a hit. The Broadway lyricist and librettist was a decade removed from his greatest successes when his partnership with composer Frederick Loewe produced something approaching unholy alchemy.

As far as characters are concerned, Alan Partridge makes me wet myself. I’m currently reading the book and have started talking like him as an unfortunate consequence.

Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic.

I’ve met lots of footballers like Alan Shearer, David Beckham, and Steven Gerrard. I don’t really get starstruck because I just think they’re another footballer like me; they just get paid a lot more.

Growing up, I was obsessed with Disney movies like ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Beauty And The Beast.’ I was always singing the songs from these movies, so to find myself in the studio with Alan Menken was an amazing experience. In fact, it was a dream come true.

When I first met Alan Parker, who directed ‘Angel Heart,’ he’d heard so many horror stories about me that he was literally scared to death of me. Right away, he sat me down and said, ‘I’m very scared of you. I’ve heard you’re a very bad boy.’

I fell in love with Alan Ayckbourn the day I met him and, starting with ‘The Norman Conquests,’ went on to do eight plays with him. He tells you just what you want to know and has a brilliant way of solving problems.

Alan Pardew is a very good coach and is doing very well at Newcastle. He is very thorough in his preparation for games and makes sure we all know our roles on the pitch.

My hairdresser Alan, who I’ve known since I began competing, lives with us, along with his husband Nathan, so I have my own gay gaggle.

Even though I was trained in play writing and screenwriting, when I sat down to write a comic book for the first time, Alan Moore was first and foremost in my mind.

Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don’t take the unskilled seriously.

I miss my former teachers, John Hersey and James Alan McPherson. I would love to see either or both and ask what I could do to improve, to deepen my writing.

To be asked to perform a new ‘Talking Head’ was beyond any expectation. The matchless brilliance of Alan Bennett’s words coupled with the extraordinary wisdom of Nick Hytner’s direction made this a thrilling and quite simply unforgettable experience, and I’m enormously grateful.

It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe‘s history and not Europe’s present.

There are some days when you don’t feel like being Alan Cumming.

The Princeton economist Alan Krueger has demonstrated that societies with higher levels of income inequality are societies with lower levels of social mobility.

It’s not easy to convey to someone who doesn’t read comics just how Alan Moore has dominated the field since ‘Watchmen.’

I didn’t know Alan Pardew before football at all.

Musically, I actually grew up listening to country music as a kid, like George Strait, Alan Jackson… all those guys. So it was kind of weird crossing over from that to pop and R&B, but you know, I love Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, Usher, R. Kelly, Drake, Boyz II Men.

I found reading Alan Bennett striking because you have this sudden flash of recognition when you read about a boy who has intellectual interests utterly different from his parents.

Yes, I’m happy with Alan Ball’s production of my novels.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the co-author of the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill, has said the failure of that bill was a function of the lack of an ID card system.

I’d rather be David Ladd’s father than Alan Ladd any day.

I’m not gay, but I don’t think you have to be gay to have a gay hero. Growing up, Alan Turing was certainly mine. I’m also not the greatest mathematician of my generation. We have lots of biographical differences, but nonetheless, I always identified with him so much.

I was 17, and a friend said, ‘Man, you’ve got to listen to this song,’ and he played ‘Man to Man.’ From there on, I was hooked on country. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black. Every show that came through America West Arena, I was there.

How I shall miss Alan Rickman, his beautiful command of English, and a voice he played like a musical instrument.

I had been a lifelong Alan Turing obsessive. Among incredibly nerdy teenagers, without a lot of friends, Alan Turing was always this luminary figure we’d all look up to.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how jealous I was of those men.

Alan Turing, to me, always felt like an outsider‘s outsider.

I have always found it difficult to wait for things – whether it was to see my father or sailor brother, Alan, again after their long sea trips, or the chance of a better job, or even new curtains.

My friendship with the great actor and director Alan Rickman did not have a particularly auspicious start.

When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman’s and it didn’t bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.

Alan Greenspan is going to go down in history as one of the worst Federal Reserve chairmen ever.

Alan Shearer was tough, would be hard to play against, a difficult opponent.

I had first heard about Alan Turing when I was a teenager. I’ve known about him since I was a kid, and I always wanted to write about him.

‘Six Feet Under,’ for me, was college. Alan Ball and Alan Poul ran that show and really taught me what it meant to really run a show in a classic way.

Alan King, a comedian I adored, was considered society, and I was considered the Jewish kid from the neighborhood.

Alan Ball, he’s good at challenging his actors, I’ll say that.

I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight ‘method‘ actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape – it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because ‘Robin Hood’ was one of my favourite films.

When I was 15 my great Aunt Nancy gave me a book of Alan Bennett plays, and I thought he was the bees knees.

In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis’ communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay?

You’re in a scene with Laura Linney or Oliver Platt or John Hickey or Alan Alda and these amazing actors and actresses, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I haven‘t even started; I’m nothing compared to these people!’

‘The Imitation Game’ is a celebration of Alan Turing’s life and legacy, and Joan‘s final monologue is our eulogy. It’s the thing we all wished we could have said to him.

My dad Alan loved Westerns and we watched them together when there wasn’t much else on TV. I had toy cowboys I’d call Richard Widmark or Gregory Peck and we’d restage the Battle of the Alamo.

Alan’s publishing company was in the Brill Building, and of course, the Brill Building was where all the songwriters hung out because that’s where all the publishers were.

There’s something about Alan Arkin. Even when he’s doing nothing, he makes me laugh. I’ve always had that reaction to him: he’s got a weary world-view that makes him perfectly cast.

I did a Broadway show with Alan Alda and how much money can Alan Alda have.

Off the top of my head, Alan Cumming was probably my biggest inspiration, as an actor and as a queer person.

In this age of vampires, what I love about ‘True Blood‘ the most is that it’s a post-modern take on it. ‘Sookie Stackhouse’ series author Charlaine Harris and ‘True Blood’ creator Alan Ball turned that whole mythology upside-down… It’s not just about vampires. It’s about a lot of different things.

I thought I knew who Alan Turing was. I’ve always loved history, and I was actually shocked by how little I actually knew. I was amazed this wasn’t common knowledge. Why wasn’t he on the front covers of my history books? He’s one of the great thinkers of the last century, and he was sort of pushed into the shadows.

My very first acting job was with Alan Parker on’ Angela’s Ashes,’ but as a child, I had written to so many other productions just applying for any role. I always wanted to be an actress, and I did loads of acting summer schools.

My relationship with Alan Shatter is a professional relationship: obviously worked with him over the years, complimented him for his work as a reforming minister, and move on.

I don’t know how to speak to celebrities. Every time I talk to Alan Menken, I say something stupid and I have to apologize.

I was shaped by the heroes in the films I saw, which you always want to emulate and be like. I wanted to be like Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart.

Why did Barry Humphries play Dame Edna for so many years? Why is Steve Coogan still doing Alan Partridge? Because there are just one or two characters they love doing. I’m lucky enough to have six that I’m crazy about.

‘The Road to Wellville’… it had Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, directed by Alan Parker. I hadn’t been doing all that well, and I was thrilled to get it, and it just didn’t work. It was a terrible movie, but I don’t think it’s anyone‘s fault.

When the former Fed chairman was in, Alan Greenspan was in, there was a saying back in those days that you called the ‘Greenspan put.’ Any time the treasury secretary – for the Fed chairman – said something, the market saw that as good news, and it took off.

This is a club with a very big history, and the fans are a big part of that. There will be pressure here, for sure, but I like pressure. I also know about the famous players who have played for Newcastle United, like Alan Shearer, who is a hero of mine.

I shared a dressing room with Alan Shearer. I used to watch the opposition looking at him, and they’d be thinking they need to score more than one because Shearer is going to score, and he scores every game. That psychological advantage is fantastic.

Alan Hutton and I are always fighting the corner for Scottish football. It’s a really tough league down here with a lot of quality players trying to get into the Premier League.

Among tech-minded kids, I think Alan Turing was a tremendous inspiration. He was a guy that was so different than the people around him. He was an outsider in his own time, but because he was an outsider is precisely why he was able to accomplish things nobody thought was possible.

I’d be interested to read Gull’s paper on it, and I wish Alan would put it in somewhere. It gives him a relevance to our times, which he doesn’t otherwise have. Gull, I mean, not Alan.

I had the chance to play with Alan Shearer to join the list of class players I’d played with at a young age at Leeds – the Vidukas, Smiths, Kewells, and Woodgates.

It was less in pity than in anger that the world was moved by the photograph of little Alan Kurdi, that dead three-year-old Syrian refugee boy whose name we’re all remembering now on the first anniversary of his drowning, along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother Rehanna.

Alan Funt was the first hidden-camera magician. It was the playful nature of the way he worked that really inspired me. A lot of prank shows and hidden-camera shows can be a little mean-spirited. Funt was never like that.

I always wanted to do films. I’d gone to New York early in 1976 and did a lot of theater, but I really wanted to chase the paths of people like Pacino and Lemmon and those guys. Alan Arkin. Film was where I wanted to go.

I remember having an argument with Alan, I said the Queen‘s not just going to call the guy up and send him out to do it. And Alan says, well, how would a monarch give orders to her assassin.

Alan Ginsberg was fabulous. The man is so filled with energy. He’s 65 years old and he’s just loaded with energy and charm and wit and his mind is constantly racing.

I have few other characters to relate to other than myself. I have enough of a body of work now that the paternal side of Alan Thicke gets a lot of play. I do get a lot of calls to play dads.

Jimmy McGovern – I love his writing, and I’m a big fan of him and Alan Clarke.

When I first met Alan, I was absolutely terrified. I was 19, he was Alan Rickman, and he’s got that voice, and I remember meeting him in the hair and make-up trailer and thinking, ‘I’m going to die. He thinks I’m rubbish. Why am I here?’

Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, unbelievable centre-forwards – but you could not say to them: ‘For the next three weeks I want you to play No 10 and thread the ball through the eye of a needle.’

I think it says wonders about people that can write an entire album, and put out an entire album of great songs. I mean, the Brad Paisley‘s, Alan Jackson especially, even Taylor Swift – those people can really pen great stuff.

Alan Turing is such an amazing, tragic story.

When you deal with Alan Ball, you’re dealing with a person who is a genius in terms of how art imitates life.

Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson have rejoined and gone off again and rejoined, but I’ve been there the whole time, and even though Alan White is the ‘new’ drummer, he has been there since 1972, so he also deserves the credit for being around for 20 years.

When I was a kid growing up, I liked the sympathetic characters played by Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon, and James Stewart. They were my heroes. No matter what happened to them, they survived with their dignity intact.

Between Alan Freed in Cleveland and Bob Horn and Lee Stewart in Philadelphia and George ‘Hound Dog‘ Lorenz in Buffalo, they began to find out that white kids liked black music. It was a very significant period of time before I got there.

I was into Alan Moore and Frank Miller. I was a teenager when all those books where coming out for the first time – ‘Watchmen,’ ‘V for Vendetta.’ It was a great time to get into comics.

Alan Moore’s first choice to be the Comedian… was Burt Reynolds. But I never saw myself as Burt Reynolds; I saw myself as Edward Blake.

Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I’ve ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing ‘M*A*S*H’; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn’t want to disrupt his kids’ schooling.

I am a rereader. Quality is variety if you wait long enough. Barthes, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Celine, Duras, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Melville: There is so much to revisit. ‘Ingrid Caven,’ by Jean–Jacques Schuhl, is always in rotation. I used to read ‘Morvern Callar,’ by Alan Warner, every year – I adored that book.

Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him.

When I was at Swansea, I lost Alan Davies, who was only 30.

I’d love to work with Gerry Butler, Alan Cummings, and Ewan McGregor. It’d be amazing if we could do a Scottish Hollywood movie.

I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things – seeing coffee mornings, women talking… that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.

I felt like Alan Turing’s story was such an important story to tell, and it was so wonderful to write the script and other people find it and say, ‘I never heard this story.’ It’s such an amazing story that people don’t believe it.

I’m pretty sure I’m a doppelganger for Alan Alda. I’m a trannie; I’m a man.

Chuck Berry‘s ‘Maybellene’ hit the airwaves at about the time Alan Freed got to New York, and it was definitely a song I really loved and related to.

Alan is a great guy, a terrific guy. We haven’t worked together since then, and he’s always working with different artists. I think he sees different dimensions he can see from different guys.

My first ideas of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) arose with my Ph.D. in Edinburgh University in the early 1950s. Supervised by Alan Beatty, my research was based on his work on altering chromosomal complements in mouse embryos.

I read in the ‘Daily Mail‘ that I’m one of these ‘foul-mouthed comedians.’ But I’m much cleaner than the people they like. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to think that a 70-year-old – particularly someone like Alan Bennett – would like it, because they’ve seen a lot of stuff.

I did drop out of uni, but I worked in PR for a while and then I worked as a runner on ‘Loose Women,’ ‘The Alan Titchmarsh Show’ and ‘Hairy Bikers,’ so I know how the industry works.

Alan Pardew brought me to Southampton and was a great influence and then we had consecutive promotions under Nigel Adkins.

Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber is the greatest bad guy in a movie ever.

I don’t know a nicer guy in the world than Alan Alda.

The first time I went to New York, I met Alan Freed.

I’ve known Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and they’re two of the most independent people I’ve ever known in my life, and the thought we could somehow bend their views I find really beyond my capacity to believe.

I would totally, if Alan Cumming is tired of doing Cabaret, I’d be like, ‘I’ll do it tonight.’ I would have such a good time doing that.

I have never heard the word brand used so often as I did around The Guardian. Brand was the magical word, particularly as it was uttered by Alan Rusbridger, that would transform the paper and the goal that everyone was working toward.

Alan Rusbridger is, to many, among the most admired newspaper editors of our time.

To me, Alan Turing was a mystery – it was sort of like something I needed to unravel. And he was also obsessed with puzzles. So I wanted to make the movie like a mystery, like a puzzle that you’re piecing together.

I particularly like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Both writers have wit and imagination and the breadth of stories they tell coupled with extraordinary artwork make for fascinating reading.

I think of Alan Thicke as Perry Como without the excitement.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and George Strait. That’s what I grew up on. But I also loved Usher and Justin Timberlake.

I didnt see a lot of Alan Knott but from what I have seen of footage, he must have been amazing. Jack Russell just had beautiful hands. Class. But I cannot imagine anyone doing anything better than Ian Healy.

I had so many offers after ‘True Blood’ for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball’s vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I’ve always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I’ve never really had the chance to do that.