A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

Captain Hale alone without sympathy or support save that from above on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.

I would venture to guess that if I was a construction worker... who requested a transfer to another department for the betterment of his family I would be commended for it. But because it's sports there's just so much passion added to it.

There was a time when someone would get on a plane and request to move their seat just because the person sitting next to them was of a different ethnicity or religion or nationality. But I don't think my generation wants that. That's how it used to be.

There is a one woman in China that claimed she paid $50 to get my e-mail address. It was pretty shocking. I got one this morning from Scotland. A girl's requesting a signed photo of me.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

A clever imagination humorous request can open closed doors and closed minds.

Italy has piled up huge public debt because the successive governments were too close to the life of ordinary citizens too willing to please the requests of everybody thereby acting against the interests of future generations.

By no means do I want to be a piece of meat for the rest of my career. It's funny when you get asked to do a talk show and then they follow it up with requesting you take your shirt off.

Not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request urging that I should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of Mathematics.