We’ve collected the best Ray Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Booker T, Peter Capaldi, Marc Guggenheim, Morris Dees, Gale Sayers. Use them as an inspiration.
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I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.
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‘Ray of Light’ changed my life. The whole album, but that song specifically, was just so life-changing and incredible for me.
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Right around 2004 when ‘Ray’ came out, I made a conscious decision to be more discerning because I thought to myself, ‘After something like this, I really have to try to be strong enough to turn stuff down.’
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I always loved LeAnn Rimes and especially Clint Black for his soulfulness. As I’ve gotten older, my influences have broadened – John Mayer, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban, Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Beatles – all of these artists have somehow been a part of my development as a songwriter.
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My major influence is Satyajit Ray; his film ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’ was set in Awadh and it gave us memorable characters. Ray’s musical scores and soundtracks were an intrinsic part of his films. And music to me is important, too.
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I’m someone who’s always looking for hope – if there’s a ray of hope, a shrapnel, shred, a flake of hope – because I take the misfortune or hard times of others very seriously.
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My life changed when I was introduced to Satyajit Ray. It was acting for me thereafter.
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Ray Lewis, I’ve grown up watching Ray Lewis. Just watching his intensity, his passion for the game, his love for the game, his work ethic. Everything in a linebacker that you want to be is in Ray Lewis, from leadership qualities, all that.
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When I go back to seek inspiration – whether it be from Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan – it’s from the performance. Those artists are in the studio playing their instrument and singing. There’s no going back and redoing the vocals.
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I know one thing: Ray Mercer is not going down from a head punch. I think he’s got one of the best chins in the game.
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I was a massive fan of AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Muse – I went to see all of them live. B.B. King, Chuck Berry, I love Ray Charles. I just like a bit of everything.
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More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn’t afraid of looking uncool – he wasn’t scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.
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I didn’t really know what I was looking at when I first came across Man Ray’s ‘Dust Breeding,’ his photograph of a work by Marcel Duchamp called ‘Large Glass.’ It looked like an aerial photograph or a view through a microscope.
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The characters in ‘Ray Donovan’ are not very articulate – we’re the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A.
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The first time I met Ray, I was going to school around the corner from his house. One day, he was playing the piano. I eased up on the porch to listen to him.
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When I was 15, we settled in Santa Monica, in a beige suburban ranch house. By then, my father, Ray, was an architect at Welton Becket’s firm. He was handy with a pencil and pen. His figurative drawings were very good, and his talent was intimidating.
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‘Detroit‘ started based on a book called ‘The Singularity is Near’ by Ray Kurzweil, which is about this idea that one day there could be machines that are more intelligent than we are.
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I have grown up watching Satyajit Ray, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee, Ritwik Ghatak, Raj Kapoor; listening to SD Burman, RD, Kishore Kumar and Salil Chowdhury.
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I think you have a lot of really good artists today. You have your Beyonce, Usher, Nicki Minaj and the like. But our generation, the artists were stronger. You’re talking about myself, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, The Temptations, The Four Tops.
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I turned my attention for a while to gamma ray astronomy and soon began the first in a continous series of experiments at the Savannah River site to study the properties of the neutrino.
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The Doors are Ray, Robby, Jim and John.
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I love watching old fights. It’s hard to watch the black-and-white footage, although I know about Randolph Turpin and people like that, but I’m talking about Hearns, Haggler, Leonard, those guys. Sugar Ray Leonard, he was way before his time, throwing bolos and all that, those big wind-up bolo shots.
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When I was fifteen, my father gave me a first edition copy of Ray Bradbury’s magnificent work, ‘The Martian Chronicles.’ I had read other science fiction by noted authors, but this book was something else altogether.
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I’m a huge Ray Lewis fan and Ravens fan in general.
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Who isn’t a fan of Ray Charles?
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I think Ray Charles did as much as anybody when he did his country music album. Ray Charles broke down borders and showed the similarities between country music and R&B.
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I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.
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Everyone on ‘Ray Donovan’ was super nice. I was kind of surprised by how welcoming everyone was because of how established the show was.
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Luckily, I have the good fortune of being on the same team as Ray Lewis. I don’t have to face him on Sunday.
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I feel lucky to have worked with Satyajit Ray.
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When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles.
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Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.
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Yeah, I loved Ray Bradbury.
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When you come off a losing season – one of the worst seasons in all of basketball – and get guys like Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, two perennial All-Stars, we felt like we had a championship team.
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We have learnt through experience that when an electrical ray strikes the surface of an atom, an electron, and in some circumstances a second and even a third electron, can be detached.
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I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.
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I don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.
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I like playing the contrasting roles. It what inspires me to act. If I look back on my career I am happy that I have gotten to play a wide variety of different roles, from Mike Dexter, to Van Ray in Fast Lane, to Dr. Cullen to Coop.
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Once Ray was a Ewing, all the problems were solved.
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I always say that I went to the College of Blossoms and the University of Ray Charles.
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I thought Ray Lewis was 6-6, 275 pounds, all muscle. I did a commercial with him before I even got drafted to the Baltimore Ravens. I was like, ‘Oh, you’re not that tall.’ But it’s just something about that guy.
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When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice.
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My father, Inder Raj Anand – a famous writer in his own right – was a great friend of Satyajit Ray.
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I think it was everything about him: his work ethic, his desire to be the best football player that he can be. He just woke up and he was just Ray Lewis, so he did pretty much everything great. He was a great teammate.
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I was born in Islington and grew up in Islington, so Arsenal was all around me, and supporting them was kind of unavoidable. The first season I started going to watch them was when we did the Double in 1971, so my first heroes were Charlie George, Ray Kennedy, and John Radford.
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I would’ve given my right arm to do something on the ‘Ray’ film, the movie about Ray Charles.
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I liked Roy Jones, Sugar Ray Leonard, Ali… those were the guys I was looking at growing up.
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Ray Aghayan told me to be more flamboyant, but I have to be me.
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I watched Ali, studied Ali, and I studied Sugar Ray Robinson. I watched them display showmanship. I watched them use pizzazz, personality, and charisma. I took things from them and borrowed things from them because boxing is entertainment.
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I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles. I was asked, ‘What kind of music do you like to listen to?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles,’ and they literally said, ‘Either forget about that or leave.’
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I have looked at videos of many great champions like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Joe Frazier, who each had special qualities. I never say one particular fighter is the best ever because each has a special unique style of fighting.
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‘Ray Donovan’ was all fiction and pure fun, to be working with such greats as Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight. My character was recurring, but my storyline was intricate to the whole thing. With the character that I played, I got to go through all aspects of my instrument. I got to bring it to tears and to laughter.
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I grew up singing Ray Charles and Jimmy Reed.
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I’ve always liked authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.
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Working with stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Soumitra Chatterjee and Rabi Ghosh is an experience I always cherish.
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I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.
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My music library has about every genre of music possible. I’ve really gotten into Ray LaMontagne, He makes amazing music, so I listen to him, and he’s a great artist.
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When actors have the opportunity to play a larger-than-life icon – my wife did it with Tina Turner, and Jamie Foxx did it with Ray Charles – you have to make a decision how you go in. What do you start with? Where do you begin?
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Sugar Ray Robinson was at the top of the boxing world during the 1950’s when it seemed that he would either win or lose the championship about every three or four months.
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When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.
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My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I’ve grown up listening to all kinds of music.
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We felt a responsibility to the McDonald brothers and to Ray Kroc to be as factual as possible. We didn’t have a responsibility to make anyone look good or anybody look bad, just to try our best to be honest.
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I loved Ray from ‘The Princess and the Frog.’ He was my guy. There was no Ray before me, so there’s a level of satisfaction there.
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I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker.
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All we can do is keep going up against then as long as Ray is alive because when he dies it will not be possible to establish the truth of his innocence in a court of law.
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I always considered Ray Harryhausen’s work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.
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I’ll fight you, and I’ll have respect at the end. If you win, I have respect; if I win, I expect respect, Ray Mercer, man, I don’t want to mention this guy’s name anymore. He gets no respect from me. He was not professional, and he showed poor sportsmanship.
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Our problems stem from our childhood. Ray was, for so long, the only boy. Then I arrive and take all his limelight away from him. That must have quite a profound effect. I sometimes think that Ray was only happy for three-and-a-half years in his life. And those were the three-and-a-half years before I was born.
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I don’t think I’ve met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.
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I used to bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, Leon Spinks, Sugar Ray Leonard. I used to bodyguard a lot of diamond merchants; I would travel with a suitcase full of diamonds and take them from point A to point B. My reputation grew because I was a professional. I did my job, and I was courteous – a no-nonsense guy.
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I would’ve done anything to work with Satyajit Ray.
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I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald’s. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing – a hamburger and fries to go – but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.
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I think Ray Liotta in ‘Goodfellas’ is the best ever. Given that it was two hours, it was a little bit more theatrical, and I mean that in the most positive way.
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My father was a low-budget monster movie maker, so he made classics like ‘The Crater Lake Monster.’ There were always creatures around. And my dad was a huge fan of Ray Harryhausen. One of our neighbors, who went on to win several Academy Awards, was close friends with my dad. His name is Phil Tippett.
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I was reading an article with Stevie Ray Vaughan a long time ago, and the number ‘1959’ stuck out to me for some reason. So I started searching those out as the band got more popular and I could actually afford one. And I found this one in Los Angeles. That’s what introduced me to the whole world of 1959s.
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I really value and appreciate Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju’s contribution in spearheading the historic judgement of decriminalisation of Section 377 in India. Their relentless efforts and fight against the discrimination and violence faced by the LGBTQ community in India was a ray of hope for many of us.
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Ray Bradbury’s connections to fantasy, space, cinema, to the macabre and the melancholy, were all born of his years spent running, jumping, galloping through the woods, across the fields, and down the brick-paved streets of Waukegan.
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I understand that not everyone agrees with my perspective on Ray Kelly. But what you gotta look at here is somebody like Bill de Blasio talking out of both sides of his mouth and trying to have it both ways on a really critical issue like stop-and-frisk.
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Ray Bradbury was the first author that I was really exposed to back in grade school. I’m a big Philip K. Dick fan, but the emotion and humanity that Bradbury brings to his stories and the way he uses sci-fi to get at the human heart is something that’s unique and for me incredibly influential.
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Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music.
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I’m always dissing Ray and making fun of him, talking about his money.
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Well I don’t think I’ve scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.
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Ray Charles, in his own way, it’s like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.
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I tend to be a fan of darker shows and love ‘The Americans,’ ‘Ray Donovan,’ ‘True Detective,’ ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Peaky Blinders.’
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Chris Jericho and I were really excited about teaming together, but we didn’t get to sink our teeth into what we could have done as a team. We really wanted to throw it back to the glory days of Pat Patterson and Ray Stevens. We were committed, we were coming up with team moves, and all of the things were made to work.
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Ray Harryhausen’s ‘Sinbad’ picture was the first film I remember seeing. I was two years old when it came out, and it changed my life forever. I had nightmares about dragons and stuff for years – and loved it!
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Hey, you can’t play football forever unless you’re Brett Favre or Ray Lewis.
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I remember when Muhammad Ali got beaten the first time. I remember when Lennox Lewis got beaten the first time, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson. All of those were legendary fighters, and they came back, and that’s what made them different – what they did after they got beat.
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‘Ray Donovan’ is such a revelation to everybody who’s working on it, and it’s only getting better.
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I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound.
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We have about 4 million people who have voted for who they want to see in the Hall of Fame. There are some people they put down that are pretty good players. You have Ray Guy, Jim Plunkett, Lester Hayes and Donnie Shell.
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The Paris agreement represents a huge step forward. It would have been preferable, of course, to start the process many years earlier, and a lot of question marks remain on how nations will ratify it, adhere to it and report their carbon reductions. But this is a remarkable ray of hope for our planet.
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One day I heard Ray Charles on the radio and I found out he was blind. I thought, ‘You know what, if there’s room for Ray, there might be room for Jose.’
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Ray Leonard is more the family man, kind of quiet. He’s not as outgoing as Sugar Ray Leonard. Sugar Ray Leonard was very determined, very focused, very outgoing and very selfish, if you will. There are two different individuals there.
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I think there are always people who, when they get the bug to play an instrument, they want to get as good as they can with it rather than just be simply adequate at it. You run into them every once in a while – some kid who wants to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, for whatever reason, and plays exactly like him.
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Sugar Ray Robinson is my favorite boxer of all time. He is a middleweight. I saw him and liked him.
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Sugar Ray Leonard was as close as anyone came after Ali to being Ali, but he wasn’t Ali.
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To me, Satyajit Ray is just Manik da. Our relationship dates back to 1958, when he introduced me to the silver screen. I was just 13.
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I’d like to team up with somebody like Willie Nelson or Ray Benson.
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I just did a part in ‘Sin City 2.’ I got to do a scene with Ray Liotta. Amazing man, extraordinary gentleman who was just so kind to me… I’m so excited about that; I think it’s gonna be very cool.
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Quincy Jones’ autobiography ‘Q’ is very good. Because he’s a master at music, he’s one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles.
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Ray Lewis, the greatest player ever, has been hurt a couple of times, but he has always come back strong.
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For me, one of my personal inspirations was designers in the mid-20th century named Charles and Ray Eames.
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One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta… And they didn’t even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it’s mono.
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Well, I’m Buddhist, Ray, and so part of my Buddhism has allowed me to look a little more deeply at people and the events in my life that created me. And I think a lot of that Buddhism comes out in the world view in this novel.
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Ya know, I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald’s. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing – a hamburger and fries to go – but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.
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I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.
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Ray Bradbury is one who is contributing to the understanding of the imagination and the curiosity of the human race.
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I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that’s all there was on the jukebox.
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