Catholics From The United States

"Over the years, obviously since I’ve been so dominant, everybody supported the gymnastics and praised me for what I’ve done in the gym — and not really outside (of the gym)."

"Turn her loose, Robert. You might learn something."

"Nobody gave me anything. I had to fight to do scripts and fight not to do scripts and go on suspension and sue, and that's what saved me. Take Mary Astor. I had to fight to get her into ', and she won the Oscar, and then did The Maltese Falcon and had a whole new career. She was beautiful, and a fine actress, but she could never be sure of that, because she was so beautiful that everything was handed to her right from the beginning only because of her beauty. So that led to insecurity and drinking and terrible scandals, and she became her own worst enemy."

"I am going back home in one piece, which I was a little bit nervous about. It's not how I wanted it to go, but I think we've opened bigger doors and bigger conversations."

"If I could only get to see Mary Astor! Mary Astor was always my favorite actress. [...] When Mary Astor sat down to play the piano, she bloody well played the thing."

"Mary Astor said nothing but stared a lot over the top of her glasses, and I thought this was a woman that no one will get close to. To my surprise she asked everyone to autograph the front page of her script. She was collecting autographs, she said, from every television play she had ever done. It was the first intimation of what it took me a long time to realize: She nearly always likes the people she works with. What I had taken to be offhandedness was her way of covering her terror of live television. Anyway, in that ill-lit ballroom, there she was, a good deal older than when she had won her Academy Award but not much changed; the darkly red hair in the mannish cut, that profile, the freckles, eyes the color of cracked hazelnuts. And the unique voice, a cello voice, Edith Cortright's voice in Dodsworth, a voice that has a trick to it: It can make a banal line seem intelligent; it has had experience doing that."

"Mary is un-actressy, though, herself, one of the least actressy actresses I have ever known. She is no more given to ostentatious behavior than she is to big hats. In fact, the impression she gives is more that of a successful woman lawyer; that has something to do with her native intelligence. [...] [A]s a person there is so little sham in her that you wonder at her spending forty years working in artificial light. It has always been the work she likes and not the limelight. "Let's work," she says at rehearsal and if there is too much chat about it, "Let's get back to work.""

"When I think of Mary Astor, which is quite often, that prayer that was recited over our heads at College comes to mind. "Lord" (or some such), "who has granted that when two or three are gathered together in Thy Name, Thou wilt grant their requests . . ." And I have thought how strange it is, and how indisputable, that when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played. And all this in spite of—or because of—the fact that she was never exactly a star. [...] [She] conceive[d] of her performance from the start in the terms the author laid down, not in terms of her own personality. This is why every performance she gave has the ring of truthfulness and the depth of reality. She was never a good liar."

"I definitely had the team in my best interest, and that’s why I decided to pull out. I didn’t want to potentially lose a medal spot for them, because the girls were more than prepared to go in and to do their job, which they did. My body and my mind just said no. Even I didn’t know what I was going through it, until it just happened.... Train five years and it doesn’t go the way you wanted. But I know that I helped a lot of people and athletes speak out about mental health and saying no."

"As far as acting was concerned, I simply did what I was told. This I was good at. For too many years I had searched for cues as to my father's disposition and desires. And this ability called forth praise of "How beautifully she takes direction!" You bet I did! In silents the direction went on during the action: after the camera turned, I'd hear, "Now look at him, Mary—that's it—you can't believe it! Tears come to your eyes—reach out and touch his arm—gently, gently." The more experienced actors would refuse anything but the minimum of offstage cueing, like perhaps, "You hear the door slam," but I wouldn't have been able to carry a whole scene without help. Not because I'd forget what we had done in rehearsal, but because I was afraid I'd do it wrong. You see, I was "stupid"—I really thought I was—and that was the role I played in life. It was very safe."

"I think "laconic" is a good word for and for his technique of direction. No big deal about communication with John. Terse, pithy, to the point. Very Irish, a dark personality, a sensitivity which he did everything to conceal, but once he said to me while I was doing a scene with Ray Massey, "Make it scan, Mary." And I said to myself, "Aha! I know you now!"."

"We're still a mission diocese and we have missionary needs."

"Yes, I do miss my "family." That great big family I accumulated over the years. [...]. We shared the ephemeral quality, the sense of impermanence of the medium we worked in. Often when a scene was being worked over in rehearsal, experimenting, nit-picking about words and moves, somebody would break up the over-seriousness with the question, "Who's waiting for this opera, anyway?" and we'd all laugh and realize it was all something that shouldn't be taken too seriously—and yet, if it wasn't taken seriously it wasn't any good. I miss these people who were part of my life—co-workers, co-actors. Friends. And I watch the new ones, the new breed, and when they do something great and fine, I'm proud. And when they do things that are blatantly bad, I am ashamed. But I can't disinherit them, for no matter how much they may feel that it is a whole new thing, it isn't really. It is a continuation. For what they have today was built upon the great and fine and the blatantly bad jobs that we did—we old movie-makers."

"I was a priest to the Catholics and a chaplain to all."

"Under contract, for some weird reason, you get typed, stuck into the same part, over and over again. In my case, it was mother roles. It isn't that I didn't like being a mother: I had two wonderful children of my own. But Metro's Mothers never did anything but mothering. They never had a thought in their heads except their children. They sacrificed everything: they were domineering or else the "Eat up all your spinach" type. Clucking like hens. Eventually every actor on the Metro lot called me Mom. I was in my late thirties and it played hell with my image of myself. And my image of the Diary days went right down the drain."

"It's so crazy. I'm happy I was able to get back out there and do one more routine, especially since I had the girls there rooting me on as well as the guys. It just felt really amazing. I'm proud of myself for the way I pushed through and even learned that dismount that I haven't done in years. And just put up a good set, that's all I really wanted. I wasn't expecting to walk away with a medal or anything, I just wanted to go out there and do it for myself. And I did."

"I decided to pull myself out so if anything, I think by having me not in competition they won the medal because if I would have been in, I would have gotten more lost in the air and had a fall and potentially injured myself and you can't replace an athlete. It could have gone a lot of different ways, but people don't know the rules. They think 'Well, she just quit,' and I'm like, 'No, I don't think so.'"

"So many sacrifice other needs to pay for the cost of this Catholic education. It isn't always easy, and isn't always appreciated, yet the sacrifice is worth it."

"There is a kind of attitude, a manner of speaking, a look in the eye, the kind of smile you get, the embrace from a director or producer that carries the most depressing hypocrisy: "Hey! You know you're still looking pretty sexy!" "Wow, you still got it, you know!" "You haven't got a worry in the world—you can be right up there again." Translated, in means "The old girl still looks pretty good." But the old girl, now nearing fifty, is not a young girl, is not sexy and has no intention of competing with anybody. Competition has never been my thing, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be right up there again. [...] I wanted to put my craft, what I had learned, my experiences, to work. The myth of Sunset Boulevard, with the old glamorous actress looking at all her old movies in the sumptuous, decaying mansion, is just that. It may have been taken from a factual story of some kind of nut—but believe me, that isn't where old actresses go!"

"If I ever do make Beau Brummel, I want that girl to play Lady Margery Alvanley."

"Tuesday night we had a dinner at ‘21’ and on the way to see ' he did kiss me—and I don’t think either of us remember much what the show was about. We played kneesies during the first two acts, my hand wasn’t in my own lap during the third. It’s been years since I’ve felt up a man in public, but I just got carried away. Afterwards we had a drink someplace and then went to a little flat in 73rd Street where we could be alone, and it was all very thrilling and beautiful. Once George lays down his glasses, he is quite a different man. His powers of recuperation are amazing, and we made love all night long. It all worked perfectly, and we shared our fourth climax at dawn. I didn’t see much of anybody else the rest of the time—we saw every show in town, had grand fun together and went frequently to 73rd Street where he fucked the living daylights out of me.”"

"I’m going to go out there and represent the U.S.A., represent World Champions Centre, and represent Black and brown girls over the world. At the end of the day, I’m not representing U.S.A. Gymnastics."

"That guy over there, Ray Massey. He can put his boots under my bed any day of the week."

"Acting was my parents' idea for me. I happened to have a very pretty face. It was a very pretty face indeed, and it was sold to the highest bidder, that's all. I wanted to be a writer. I didn't know that until about 15 years ago, and I've been writing ever since. And that's about all I want to do."

"We're not just athletes or entertainment -- we're human, too, and we have real emotions. Sometimes they don't realize that we have things going on behind the scenes that affects us whenever we go out and compete."

"Another offering that is on the grim side but will hold your interest as a dramatic story in A Place Called Saturday, by Mary Astor. The former screen actress tells the story of a rape—and its effect on not only the victim, an Arizona housewife, but also on her husband and her "friends," one of whom, as it turns out, is "is going steady," as they used to say, with the rapist. There's everything here, from impotence to abortion, and Miss Astor is rapidly developing, from book to book, no mean ability at pulling out emotional stops."

"My father often used to rebuke me by saying, "You're almost nine years old" (and then "ten," and then "eleven," and "twelve") "and you haven't learned a thing!" Well, here I was, fifty years old and I still hadn't learned a thing! My father's rebuke had always seemed to imply a promise that years, the very accumulation of years, would bring experience and understanding. So, at whatever age I was, I wished I were older. At seventeen I longed to be twenty-five. At twenty I wanted to be a woman of the world of thirty. At thirty I read that the French thought a woman did not reach full maturity of beauty and attractiveness until she was forty. Finally, at forty-five, I decided that the whole thing was a pack of lies. Where was the "serenity" that the years were to bring? Where was :"the cooling of passion's blood?" I realized that I, who leaned on so many people and things, had been leaning even on the abstraction of time."

"It is the duty of all lay Catholics to bring to the attention of the pastors of the Church their needs, their desires, and their views of ecclesial matters. This duty is set forth in the chapter on the laity in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, . So those lay Catholics who see "deconstructing" going on, it seems to me, should exercise their right and duty to make this known to those who they feel are engaged in such activities."

"It’s been a great joy for me to have been here as the bishop, a true gift from the Lord, not that everything has been perfect, because no life is perfect. But if I put everything on a scale, I have to say that the scale goes way up here to the good."

"I would really like to do more dramatic work on the stage. It's difficult as a character actress because they casting directors and producers don't think of you as an actress, they think of you as a comedian."

"Many have sacrificed their lives for our freedoms, and of course among the first and the founding freedoms of our country was that of religious liberty. Does a service member have to forfeit their constitutional right when they put on the uniform?"

"Every week, since the Supreme Court's decisions of January 22, 1973, there have been as many deaths from abortion as there were deaths at Nagasaki as a result of the atomic bomb. Every nine days there are as many deaths from abortion as there were American deaths in the 10 years of the Vietnam war."

"I've always been very happy as a priest and I expect to be very happy in just kind of getting to know people. I think one of the most important things a priest does is that he has an opportunity to spend time with people and I'm looking forward to that."

"In the years remaining for me, I shall strive to be a caring pastor, a faithful teacher, a loving father and brother and a true servant of the people of God in the District of Columbia and the five counties of Maryland. I am truly honored, very humbled and deeply grateful that our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has chosen me to serve as a cardinal of the church."

"The past and present speak to the future. The future does not speak, but waits to see what we bring to it."

"We shelter the homeless, educate those hungry for knowledge, and care for the sick not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic. They are Jesus in disguise."

"First, I'd like them to say that he was always loyal to his church. Second, that he was a friend to Catholic education. And third, if they don't want to say the first two, at least I hope they would chisel on the stone, 'He served the poor."

"We ask special blessings for those men and women who in sincerity and honesty have been leaders in the struggle for justice and harmony among races. As Moses of old, they have gone before their people to a land of promise. Let that promise quickly become a reality, so that the ideals of freedom, blessed alike by our religious faith and our heritage of democracy, will prevail in our land."

"Whenever you are just about to decide that Americans are selfish, unpatriotic, and unintelligent, they always prove themselves the most liberal and lovable people in the world. You simply can't stay disgusted with them. What a pity they are not disciplined enough to survive! (Ch. 20)"

"Honor and honesty, compassion and truth are good even if they kill you, for they alone give life its dignity and worth. (Ch. 24)"

"That short period of my life spent in the line is the only one I remember step by step – as if it moved sub specie aeternitatis. Not that I enjoyed it; I hated it. Not that I was fitted for it by temperament or ability, I was desperately unfitted; but it, somehow, had meaning, and daily life hasn't: it was part of a common endeavor, and daily life is isolated and lonely. (Ch. 17, on his service on the Western Front in World War I)"

"I cannot come in with preconceptions of any issue. I need to listen what we can do to resolve and heal the wounds left in the community."

"One night Jakie Smith rushed into my room with the sudden illumination: "I know what it is! The law is common sense plus clear English!" I've never heard a better definition of what the law should be and isn't. (Ch. 11)"

"Delta girls are born dancing and never stop, which is as it should be, for surely it is the finest form of human amusement except tennis and talking. (Ch. 12)"

"What I wrote seemed to me more essentially myself than anything I did or said. It often gushed up almost involuntarily like automatic writing, and the difficulty lay in keeping the hot gush continuous and unselfconscious while at the same time directing it with cold intellect into form. I never could write in cold blood. The results were intensely personal, whatever their other defects. (Ch. 12, on writing poetry)"

"Only one thing never changes – the human heart. Revolutions and ideologies may lacerate it, even break it, but they cannot change its essence. After Fascism and Communism and Capitalism and Socialism are over and forgotten as completely as slavery and the old South, that same headstrong human heart will be clamoring for the old things it wept for in Eden – love and a chance to be noble, laughter and a chance to adore something, someone, somewhere. (Ch. 3)"

"Our woods are not made for walking because the vines and bushes are too rampant and the rattlesnakes too much at home. But the high levee is perfect for a stroll, which you can extend, if so minded, a hundred miles in either direction. (Ch. 12, on Greenville, Mississippi)"

"I never heard them over their juleps express a philosophy of life, and if I had it would have been incomprehensible to me, but a philosophy was implicit in all their thoughts and actions. It probably made the Southern pattern. Perhaps it is all contained in a remark of Father's when he was thinking aloud one night and I sat at his feet eavesdropping eagerly: "I guess a man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able – always remembering the results will be infinitesimal – and to attend to his own soul." (Ch. 7)"

"I am humbled and grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for his confidence in choosing me for this indispensable ministry in the Church. I pledge to His Holiness my loyal communion, fraternal love and respect as a bishop of the Church. And to all of the people of the diocese I want to express my esteem for you as brothers and sisters in faith. I pledge to all of you that I will serve you in the name of the Lord to the best of my ability."

"WASHINGTON − Progressive firebrand Sen. Bernie Sanders said he believes President Donald Trump is “moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism" after Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to help quell immigration protests in Los Angeles. “This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the Constitution. He does not believe in the rule of law. My understanding is that the governor of California, the mayor of the city of Los Angeles did not request the National Guard, but he thinks he has a right to do anything he wants,” Sanders, a Vermont independent, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”"