I'm really shocked when critics get morally outraged at my fiction because they think I'm condoning what's going on. I never come in as the author and say, "Hey, okay. I'm interrupting the narrator here. I'm Bret Easton Ellis, and I'm the author."

I know a lot of people who read and think: "George [Saunders] is so much fun." There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.

I think, I just always want to leave the door open for, you know, I don't want it to be finished. I've never gotten sick of a song, I've played them over and over and over again, and if I get bored with something, then I'll just change that thing.

I was never told to "Get up, get out there, get a job." It was never a thing either parent ever said I had to do. It was what I wanted to do. I think I was very interested in being away from them as much as possible. Employment was great for that.

When I look around the world and see so many countries turning people away, I think it is terrible. And I know that these are all issues that Germany is culturally dealing with in terms of integration but it is just something that I deeply admire.

I think economics is about passion. Economic progress, whether it is a two-person coffee shop or whether it is Netscape, is about people with brave ideas. Because it is brave to mortgage the house, when you've got two kids, to start a coffee shop.

I think I've been called edgy - but in all honesty, there is a safety in what I do because I'm always the idiot. Unless you're just listening to buzz words and not taking into account the context of the situation, you see I'm always the ignoramus.

I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that's a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of "reservoir," albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy.

I think our great task is to make certain that our young men and women in the military do not get sucked into never- ending, perpetual warfare within the quagmire of Syria and Iraq. And I will do my very best to make sure that that doesn't happen.

In my head I think, There is a beautiful picture here and by God, short of murder, I'm going to get it. So shut up and hold still! But what I say is: You look wonderful. It'll just take a minute. It's marvelous. We're doing something very special.

It's because you aren't thinking very clearly tonight." "I know. Being Drunk is weird." "Oh my god. I love you so much. Especially when you say stuff like that." "Like what?" "Nothing. Never mind. Although I'm dying to know why your shoe is green.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.

a white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when it comes to race relations, not telling the whole truth about the fog one inhabits slows down the work of groping forward.

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.

They talk about a lot of different things, but I think they definitely have the same school of thought as my husband [Games Of Thrones creator David Benioff], which is that the difference between being a writer and not being a writer is finishing.

China's cinema has been rising for some time; it has more exposure, so my chances of becoming internationally known are better. But the first thing I have to do is learn English. If I can grasp the language, then perhaps I can think about the U.S.

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972.

You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.

What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, youve got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.

I think transitions are never that noticeable, but they are always on their way. It has to do with distance and accessibility. People call it mellowing, but I think it's how available you are toward other people, or how much you distance yourself.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor [group think] of the age and not go flopping along. By doing this he helps us to question and reassess our past, present and future situations, our assumptions and our options.

Audiences aren't going to get rid of me. One thing I can say, with absolute certainty, is that my shows will still be performed when I'm dead, buried and forgotten. They're going to absolutely outlive me, which is a wonderful thing to think about.

Law of Attraction won't let you remove a thought. You cannot concentrate upon NOT thinking about something hard enough to stop thinking about it! For the more you decide you will not think about it, the more you think about it!...Think about that.

If your house is on fire and you can only escape with your life and one thing, what one thing would you take out of your house? I got to think my laptop is the one thing that is totally irreplaceable. Either that or my son. Laptop. I'll go laptop.

I feel like I express myself, as an actor. Whatever the character is put in front of me, I try to bring truth to it, whichever way it lands. I try to bring as much truth to it and make it as believable as I can. I think that's the job of an actor.

I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. Youve been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your voice cannot come home. And so my whole life has been dedicated to saying, I will not be silenced.

I kept on trying to use so many media and ideas in my work because our horizon is so vast and Indian culture is so rich that I think what we are today, culturally, we have a unique position and I don't think one lifetime is enough to encompass it.

Love can be sent to others in a thousand ways. Even thoughts of love can change things. They can be felt. By you, and by the person you are thinking of, too. Yes, they can. Help others by by loving them, simply, plainly, openly, without condition.

The internet is such a strange place. You can put up one thing on there like, Katy Perry was a taekwondo master of the black belt! When really all I did was one kickboxing class. That's how I think my short time in doing my gospel record was like.

Now a days, I don't think these things scare kids. I think that kids are so desensitized to violence and I don't mean this in a negative way what so ever, but, I just think it's the reality that I think that it's just all changing so I don't know.

It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't.

I think we can leave mullets back in the '80's. Don't you? I'm really not a big fan of them. I did like the permed hair that I had in it. That was great, and I think that we should always have '80's music, forever and ever and ever. I'm a big fan.

I think my hight had the most significant single effect on my existence, aside from my brain. In fact, it's part of an inferior-superior syndrome. I think I have an inferior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.

I think there are a lot of opportunities in the Americas that matter deeply to 45 million Latinos in this country, and I would hope to be able to work to maybe elevate the profile of the Americas in our discussion about American global leadership.

Perhaps the image you have of the devil is a cartoon of a man in a red suit with horns a pointy tale and a pitch fork, Satan would love for you to think of him as a harmless cartoon character, but don't be fooled... Satan is anything but harmless.

When I think of cancer prevention, I think of cancer vaccines, but I think more broadly of all that we can do to prevent cancer. And part of that is coming up with a vaccine that will work like the vaccines we have for hepatitis B or flu or polio.

I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

I will not support putting American soldiers into Iraq as an occupying force. I don't think that is in our interest, and I don't think that would be smart to do. In fact, I think that would be a big red flag waving for ISIS to reconstitute itself.

I think [religion] is presumptuous and I think it is silly, because it makes you believe that you are less than what you can be. As long as you can blame everything on some unseen deity, you don’t ever have to be responsible for your own behavior.

At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were receiving the worst treatment. The people who were doing the greatest work were despised as lower class, with no dignity accorded to what they did.

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.

Too many people think that finding the reason God placed us here on earth will come in one assignment with a big title and complete job description. I believe that discovering our purpose will unfold slowly, like a seed planted deep in the ground.

We seem to be keeping old fans and are bringing on new fans that are teenagers. I think that is amazing. When I was a teenager, that was when I fell in love with music. It affected me in a deep way. That's why I love having teenagers at our shows.

There are periods where you think, "What am I doing?" or "What am I doing it for?"; that's a more scary question. "I've made s---loads of money, I've left my mark in music, why am I still doing this?," and it takes a while to answer that question.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say - a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale.

But if I could do anything? Maybe you would want to be able to save the world, the Voice said. Did you ever think of that? No. I frowned. Leave that to the grown-ups. But grown-ups are the ones destroying the world, the Voice said. Think about it.

It's true that most American citizens think of themselves as living in a democratic country. But when was the last time that any Americans actually sat down and came to a collective decision? Maybe if they are ordering pizzas, but basically never.

If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured.

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