I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.

I think it's so completely bizarre and arrogant for anyone to ever think that they could lose their innocence, because that implies that they have some sense, some idea of what's going on, and no one has any idea what's going on.

A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.

I've always kind of been a little skeptical about bands that won't play their hits. That's really arrogant to me as a music fan. I do want to hear obscure songs, but like most people, I want to hear the hits, so we always play them.

The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the U.N.

God will never direct us to be prideful, arrogant and unforgiving, immoral or slothful or full of fear. We step into these things because we are insensitive to the leadership of the Holy Spirit within us.

Sometimes people ask me, 'You do stand-up?' I try explaining what I do, and I don't think they really get it. So: 'Yeah, I do stand-up.' I wish there was one word to express what I do - that way, I don't sound arrogant. Whenever I say I'm a performer, people think I'm a performance artist: 'She paints herself white and pretends to be a flower.'