Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think there has to be an empathic strike between the reader and the protagonist. There has to be something said or known that connects the reader to this person you're going to ride through the story with.
In the postwar period, Americans turned away from quality as the principal goal of manufacturing and made cost the principal goal. Japanese, restructuring their companies, made exactly the opposite decision.
I've been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father's adding machine. Back then I'd type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.
Art is not just about what's great or expensive or scandalous or famous. It's a mirror we hold up that looks different to everyone who sees it, and whose beauty lies as much in us, and our capacity to dream.
If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.
And that for every negative event or coincidence that has happened since, imagining that you triggered them, that you made them happen makes you feel like you possess a degree of control that you don't have.
The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to.
You will free yourself from emotional drama by uncovering all the lies you believe in. It is a process of unlearning the lies. It is a period of cleansing, and it has nothing to do with the dream of society.
With knowledge, our creation can go in any direction - from the worst kind of drama, to the most beautiful dream. Then the best way to express our creativity is with love and awareness of what we really are.
A proper lady should be able to smile pretty, wear sequins like she means it, and kick a man's ass nine ways from Sunday while wearing stiletto heels. If she can't do that much, she's not trying hard enough.
I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that's all.
People don’t die because of loyalty.” They don’t?” She smiled. “Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?” Eddie shrugged. Better,” she said, “to be loyal to one another.
First and foremost, I would put a massive national emphasis on illiteracy with real markers that you could measure and real efforts to do a one-on-one kind of tutoring until kids can get up to snuff on that.
Oh yeah, that’s the one who kept watching me as if she was waiting for me to grow fangs and try to eat her. I couldn’t help it—I used my claws to scratch my nose. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
It's absolutely delightful to get dressed up for a lovely evening, but when it goes from being a fun thing to being a chore, and a chore that men don't have to do, then we need to think about it differently.
It has no denim-toned house paint. Levi makes what is essentially a commodity: blue jeans. Its ads may evoke rugged outdoorsmanship, but Levi hasn't promoted any particular life style to sell other products.
The media needs to tell a story. And whenever there's a new generation, you know, with a new conversation, it's handy to say well, these are the angry young men, these are the hippies, these are the boomers.
Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.
Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.
Realism implicated that imperialism and imperialist conquests or prestige can be pursued as part of the animus dominandi, the desire to dominate, which is the social force that determines political activity.
As the new spirituality begins to become the pervasive spirituality of the planet, we'll find that we have abandoned our philosophy of contradictions in which we say we're all one but continue to try to win.
I wish I could Buy Time - just write a cheque, and a few days later a brown cardboard box would arrive at the door containing three months (along with an extra bonus sunny weekend for being a good customer).
Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one's ever eaten before? Like chicken and telepone ice cream? Green mouse ice cream was the worst. I didn't like that at all.
Now Coraline," said Miss Spink, "what's your name?" "Coraline," said Coraline. "And we don't know each other, do we?" Coraline looked at the thin young woman with black button eyes and shook her head slowly.
My advice to graduates is to do anything except what you are trained for. Take that training to a place where it is out of place and stimulate ideas, shake up establishments, and don't take no for an answer.
Cell phones were more popular in Cambodia and Uganda because they didn't have phones. We had phones in this country, and we were very late to the table. They're going to adopt e-books much faster than we do.
He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard [...]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God.
After she left everything fell apart. No Jew was safe. There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn't fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late. p 8
The negative principle negates. The positive principle creates. The negative principle doubts. The positive principle believes. The negative principle accepts defeat. The positive principle goes for victory.
With no goals, no priorities, no life strategy of our own, we drift with the herd through an endless meadow of mediocrity, unable to break loose, to achieve even a small part of the dreams we once cherished.
[Jonathan] Edwards definitely shows up in the book [Saving Calvinism]. He appears as one of the interlocutors in the chapter on free will, the other being the Southern Presbyterian theologian John Girardeau.
What is enthusiasm but a passionate belief in what seems to be a high and holy aim - an unselfish devotion to some noble cause - a consecration of heart and mind and soul to the attainment of a great object?
Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed.
The guy I'd felt such an immediate and deep connection to I'd thought that just maybe there really were such things as soul mates, and had considered, at least for a few brief moments, that he might be mine.
No, my young apprentice. You said the exact right thing. Again. I'm just laughing at life." "Why?" he asked, opening both his eyes. "Because sometimes it's either laugh or cry. I prefer laugh. How about you?
Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They’re able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand.
There's no word in the language I revere more than 'teacher.' My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I've honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.
Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.
There are certain phrases in books of mine, and I don't know where they came from, or how I was capable of thinking up these formulations. It's only in the heat of composition that these things occur to you.
I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors.
You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them.
If we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely out of gratitude we will strive to live 'worthy' of such great love. We will strive for holiness not to make God love us but because He already does.
The understanding you gain from practicing gratitude frees you from being lost or identified with either the negative or the positive aspects of life, letting you simply meet life in each moment as it rises.
Women like other women fine. The more feminine she is, the more comfortable a woman feels with her own sex. It is only the occasional and therefore noticeable adventuress who refuses to make friends with us.
How innocent, how happy, how truly delightful, even, would life be if we were to desire nothing but what is to be found upon the face of the earth: in a word, nothing but what is provided ready to our hands!
Regweld is really a fine wizard," he continued, patting the shoulder again. "And his ideas for crossbreeding a horse and a frog are not without merit; never mind the explosion! Alchemy shops can be replaced!
The atonement is a multifaceted event-Jesus is shown providing surety for our debt to God, mediating the enmity between us and God, and offering Himself as a substitute to suffer God's judgment in our place.
Gossip harms relationships and that's why it's bad. While we all do it at times, there's a point where it crosses the line and becomes bullying if it damages friendships and causes people to dislike someone.
Our friends are barometers of our own lives: We look to our BFFs to better understand how we're doing ourselves. Our friends help us make sense of what we have, what we aspire to, and what we truly long for.
What are you gonna say?" Emma asked. " 'I'm not sure I want you back, but I'm sure I don't want your ex-con ex-girlfriend to have you, either'? Yeah. That'll start this little triangle off on the right foot.