"They didn't even call us once.
I'd stay out of her way and tell her to go out and cover the next campaign with that little camera, and call us once a week and tell us what she got".
""They never once called us," he said about his neighbors.
An editor once called us prose goddesses; another job description might be comma queen.
It was Napoleon who once called us a "nation of shopkeepers".
He once called us a "total mediocrity and a moron and kind of a creepy, finger-sniffer-type character". Tough but fair.
"[Former education secretary] Michael Gove once called us the enemies of promise and, of course, those who disagreed with him were derided as the Blob.
"Some magazine once called us 'The hopeless continent', citing conflicts, hunger and malnutrition, disease and poverty, as if it was a permanent African condition.
"Somebody once called us the Sub Pop for games," he said, after noticing I was wearing a shirt from the famous Seattle label.
One of the teachers from my old primary school once called us and was like "hey, there's this TV show that's being cast and they're looking for people and I think you'd be great for it".
Palos Verdes Estates is hardly an economically challenged area, O'Grady acknowledged, but Diana Heffernan-Schrader, a parent activist, "called us up and insisted". Once O'Grady saw the site, which years ago had been a garden but had been long neglected, he was on board.
