I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

- Gil Scott-Heron

I buy a lot of cookbooks. Some of them you just kind of read, and you try one recipe, and it doesn't really work. So then you don't go back to it. The new Ina Garten cookbook, which is called 'Back to Basics,' I have not had a failure with. It is the most fantastic cookbook. I think I bought 20 copies of it for friends.

- Nora Ephron

If we went back to the basics of vegetables, legumes, grains - the things closer to the Earth - it's a lot better for the Earth and for other people. We can feed more people, we can feed the starving people.

- Nellie McKay

Wal-Mart, we've been known for many years - back to the days of when Sam Walton started the company - we've been known for basics. The basic need of families and people across America. Wal-Mart was known as the place for basics.

- Mike Duke

My first job as premier will be to go back to basics.

- Lara Giddings

I live in jeans and T-shirts, and usually just throw stuff on over that. I love Brunello Cucielli, J.Crew for basics, NYDJ and DL1961 for jeans, and Magaschoni for sweaters.

- Kelly Rutherford

I'm getting the basics with the AFL, but the NFL is a different animal.

- John Elway

Second, we have to make the most of the strengths we have, the amenities that many of our competitors cannot replicate. But again, those advantages won't mean much if we don't do a great job with the basics of our business.

- Gerard Arpey

When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.

- George Stephen

I think any song should sound good just played on a solitary instrument with the vocal. If you have those basics you have all you need. The production then just polishes that idea into the finished thing.

- Gary Numan

In terms of pots and pans, I just use the basics - I'm not a snob like that.

- Aerin Lauder

If we just go back to the basics... I do not want to give up our republic and become a socialistic ideological nation. That's not who we are.

- Diane Hendricks

You have to be creative. It's the basics. You can't be Picasso unless you know how to draw a real face; then you can turn it upside down.

- Diane English

We started with the basics of kicking and punching, then we moved on once we got proficient in that, we moved on to working with the weapons, and from then on working with the wires.

- Chiaki Kuriyama

Things have changed a lot since the earth was cooling and I was a teenage girl, but the basics of teenage bedrooms have remained the same. Every girl wants a place that they are proud to call their own and where they can express their own individuality.

- Candice Olson

It's just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics - characters and great writing.

- Clive Owen

Oh yeah, we all write. That's what's great about when you have basics in piano.

- Caroline Corr

During the lockout year, my focus was the basics, sharpening my moves, my fundamentals.

- Brandon Jennings

I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?

- Anne Rice

I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.

- Alber Elbaz