Perverse Quotes

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies. We were all encouraged to believe that the classics of the theater were the fiery hoops through which you`d have to pass if you were going to have any self-esteem as a performer. It never occurred to me that that was the case. One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible. England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter. The great tradition of liberalism in England is essentially a sponge that absorbs all possibility of change. America looked different to me: the idea of America as a place of infinite possibilities was defined for me through the movies. I`m glad I did the classical work that I did, but it just wasn`t for me. I`m a little bit perverse, and I just hate doing the thing that`s the most obvious.

Acting to mid-air is odd. There`s a perverse pleasure to it when you get it right, but often you don`t. Aliens are really hard. On the second one (Star Wars: Episode II) I was doing the scene with those tall ones - actually, I quite fancied the female one - and they`ve got actors there who will actually be providing the voices for the characters. They wore blue hard hats with cardboard cut-outs of heads taped on top of them. So you`ve got to remember not to talk to the people but to talk to the hats.

On the rumors that her black eye was the result of abuse by Salman Khan: "For some perverse reason, no one wants to believe me, that I fell down the stairs. First the media calls me the woman of the millennium, a woman of substance. Then how can the same media make me out to be such a doormat? I`m a self-respecting woman, I don`t take nonsense from anyone. No one tries caveman tactics on me. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger can fall and get hurt, so why should I be any different?"

The more decadent a culture gets, the more they have a need for what they don`t have at all, which is innocence, so you end up with kiddie porn and a perverse obsession with youth.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn`t want to go down that route.

What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.

Isn`t that the most perverse thing you`ve ever heard?

Anything that was perverse and silly would be Kids in the Hall.

A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They`ll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.

I think it`s realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: `I despair. The world`s no good.` That`s a perverse idealist. It`s practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That`s very realistic.

In science, `fact` can only mean `confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.` I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.

Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it`s safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments.

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy is likely to be perverse, in that high interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure.

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It`s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.