Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.
I'm tired," she uttered complainingly. "I know you are." "You don't know anything about it. Why should you know? I never was so exhausted in my life. But it isn't unpleasant. A thousand emotions have swept through me to-night. I don't comprehend half on them. Don't mind what I'm saying; I am just thinking aloud.
Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.
Sway’s an idiot who didn’t order them when we used up the last bunch. (Vik) Isn’t that your job? (Devyn) No. I’m the sub-idiot. Sway’s head idiot because the company refuses to deal with mechas. Since I’m not organic, they think I can’t pay. (Vik) Thanks, Vik. (Devyn) Ever my pleasure to irritate you, sir. (Vik)
I live for art. I love entertaining people, making them smile and think. I love to know that a little piece of what they see, read or what they listen to is something that they can think about or see the world in a different way. Art is never-ending and I’d like to leave something that survives me when I’ll die.
I am an optimist, and I believe that people are inherently good and that if you give everyone a voice and freedom of expression, the truth and the good will outweigh the bad. So, on the whole, I think the power that online distribution confers is a positive thing for society. Online we can act as a fifth estate.
I come up with new ambitions all the time - and the coolest thing is, I think of something I want to do, and I don't really imagine it as "Oh, I've never done that." I think of it as, "Oh, I haven't done that yet." I literally believe I'm going to do everything I set out to do, which is a pretty amazing feeling.
When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part. What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?
Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.
Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61]
Presenting both sides of Christianity gives the skeptic room to breathe - and to consider the possibility that there's room in Christianity for diversity in interpreting the Bible. And it gives the traditionalist pause to think again - and to consider the possibility that she might need to tweak her hermeneutic.
We've all had some level of injustice, whether 20 years in prison, or 20 minutes sitting in your car waiting for a police officer to determine your future. Or even a few moments in an elevator with some woman clutching her purse thinking you're going to rob her ¾ regardless of celebrity, that has happened to me.
Religion and race belong together. German man can only assimilate religious faith and religious thought with a German mind and in a German way. We must not think we can come to God except through our Volk....Wherever our blood rises in protest we act immorally, even though others may try to prove it to be moral.
I think it crucial to recognize that you can't straightforwardly "adapt" Douglas Adams. Douglas's genius was uniquely his own. What I've tried to do here, and in every other version, is to be true to the character and the Adams' tone and approach to narrative, his unique brand of word-play and "idea-play" humor.
I work very regular hours, roughly 9 to 5:30. I think I have it much easier than a lot of parents. I just sit at home, I have a very flexible timetable, and I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family.
One thing about beginning writers is that they don't really always know their own strengths and weaknesses - you might think you're bad at characterization, but that might really be because of some issue you're having with another element, which is making it hard for you to express character in a convincing way.
There are very few persons who would think of inquiring into the private life of the newspaper dealer at the corner, or the druggist, or the doctor, or even a Mah Jong partner, but the moment one belongs to the theatrical profession, the public usually feels cheated unless it knows one's inmost thoughts of love.
So instead of the Super Bowl, we've got the Stupor Bowl. Two once-proud teams, now 0-4 and stumbling through the season like zombies. And if you think the Cowboys are bad (and they are), the Redskins are so bad that every few plays you have to put a mirror under thieir noses to make sure they're still breathing.
And it's absolutely great, when everything comes together with the hair, the dresses and the makeup and the models and the music and the presentation. I can't get over these girls. They look wonderful. But by the time we finish with them, they look like they came from another planet. And I just think it's great.
I think Malcolm Forbes got kicked out of our school and [Ethiopian Emperor] Hallie Selassie's grandkids went there, too. Because of security reasons you have to go to those schools. We had a privileged life, fine, but also very secure. So I think it's great where the [Barack] Obama daughters are going to school.
Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don't the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there's no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'
The best unpaid sex, where you and the woman are really into each other, and there's a lot of really intense passion, and things are really hot between you...I've never had that kind of sex when I was paying for it. The best unpaid sex is going to be, I think, more passionate and more hot than the best paid sex.
It's humbling because a lot of times people think because they are the artist or the celebrity or whatever they want to call themselves that they're above being a fan. If you like something, you can like it. You don't have to be afraid to say that so I really appreciate it and you know, to me, people are people.
When you speak directly at things and don't say you're going to try to do something or that you hope to do something, the universe will work with you. Think about it this way - a boomerang goes out and comes back to you if you throw it. If you throw it out at the universe, it will come back down to you on Earth.
I think most of us look at personal delights as somewhere between minimally important and borderline immoral. We like them, but we're not sure we ought to. We seldom give them a high priority when other demands are competing for our attention. Nevertheless, the soul feeds on simple joys and withers without them.
An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand.
Caroline stamped her foot in frustration, but when it landed, it landed on something considerably less flat than the floor. "Owww!" he yelled. Oh! His foot!Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry , she mouthed.I didn't mean it. "If you think I can understand that," he growled, "you're crazier than I'd originally thought.
Osama bin Laden is very shrewd. But he struck me, even in 1997, as being remarkably out of touch. I remember thinking this does not look like the type of guy who walks to the top of a mountain with a mobile phone and says, "Operation B, attack."Now he is America's number one enemy. He's always wanted to be that.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.
As a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven't done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what's going on at any one of those companies at this moment?
In truth I never really liked any of the heavy drugs, because normally my energy is up when I'm performing, and that's about it. Cocaine is nothing new. It's the pressure, I think. People use it to relieve that, and for me it is about getting numb and forgetting. I have a reverse metabolic reaction to the stuff.
Oftentimes, when we think of 3D, we think of things coming out of the screen, but actually, you've got this zero, this negative space, what they call the negative space, which is the scene, what's being filmed in the positive space of the audience. As you can have things come out, you can have all of this depth.
Originally, when I got the role of Lisa [from Visitors], I was a little concerned, because I was worried I would be typecast as an alien for the rest of my life. But they are so, so different that it wasn't at all a problem. I'm very lucky. I'm blessed to be on another show. I think it's going to do really well.
If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.
Even though novels were the love of my life, I started off writing poetry. I think because I had a knack for image and lyricism, even though I didn't really have anything to write about, or I didn't know what to write about. I could just couple words together that pleased me and so poetry seemed sort of natural.
The use of neuroscientific data to help resolve phenomenological questions is proving a common theme in much contemporary thinking about the mind. How rich are the contents of visual perception? Does vision only tell us about shapes and colours, or does it also represent higher categories like lemon or umbrella?
We might think that we're really intellectual and we're going to check out the library to research the meaning every time somebody puts out a new record. It's still primitive stuff. It's the same now as it was at the beginning. It's no different now. Rock 'n' roll is spirit music-it's just coming through people.
You really see that the art world bends over for Hollywood sometimes, in this way that is really grotesque, and the other way around doesn't happen, which is too bad, especially if you consider yourself an artist, and that's what you care about, to see the people you admire and think about the most acting weird.
I can’t count the times I have lagged seemingly hopelessly far behind, and nobody except myself thinks I can win. But I have pulled myself in from desperate [situations]. When you are behind there are two strategies - counter-attack or all men to the defences. I’m good at finding the right balance between those.
I believe people think as a group more often than we might realize or care to admit. We like to believe that we act as individuals and nothing more, but time and again - in corporations and business, in politics and religion, in fashion and culture, and in friendships and social circles - we think and do as one.
I remember doing "As Cool As I Am" and Steve Miller, the producer, saying "I really hear a drum loop here. I want to play it for you." When I wrote it, I thought, "This isn't going to sound very folky. I don't think it's going to go with mandolins and banjos." Then he played the loop for me and it sounded right.
I think that for most of our history, there was a nuanced reading of the Second Amendment until the decision by the late Justice [Antoine] Scalia and there was no argument until then that localities and states and the federal government had a right, as we do with every amendment, to impose reasonable regulation.
There's an aspect of human nature in which we want to think we're better than somebody else. They're a different color. They speak a different language. They have a different name for the Creator. Whatever it is, that makes it okay for me to hate them, to try to get some of their land or some of their resources.
Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself. And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don't think that we will become the machines of the machines.
The music industry is so fickle, there's so many politics. I think a lot of people don't pay attention to the credits or the artistry no more. I think there's so much concern about what's going on right now instead of the actual artistry. But that's how the record business is, but for acting, I got that covered.
When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.
I think we at the faculty level have to model this behavior of having people that really truly disagree with one another be able to discuss those beliefs with one another at the level of discussion and argument and not at the level of, you know, personal attack so that our students can learn how to do that, too.
When I was growing up, we often heard Islam in the form of a slogan: "Islam is the solution," but no one ever told me that Islam can be a burden... Very few Muslims write about Islam creatively because I don't think we're given permission to. I think that's the bane of modern Islam. It's been reduced to slogans.
I think that's why I'm so well-suited to this time, because I think the values reflect really profound American values, and I think my agenda would be the best way to really get Americans once again to feel more confident and more optimistic about our future and deliver results, which I think is what it's about.