Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue,... a conversation with God.
Is it a good hot dog? That’s all I want to know … I don’t think the personal health and purity of my colon is that important compared to pleasure. As a chef, I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist. I’m in the pleasure business …. My responsibility is to give you the most delicious tomato that I can afford, given the circumstances, and maybe increase the likelihood that you get laid after dinner.
I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire.
I think the problem is these basic sort of human values from our - from the beginning, from birth, are not sort of properly nurtured. So then our mind, our brain, through education and also difference of experiences, that eventually, these basic values or what are called dominant, not have the catching up our intelligence, experience growth, that also should grow. Then our life become more human.
What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am, and I have a huge sense of calling to communicate that to young people. When I think of myself at 13, sobbing into that carpet, I just want to help anyone in that situation to not have to go through what I did, to show that instead, you can be yourself – a person of integrity.
Edward Snowden's real "crime" is that he demonstrated how knowledge can be used to empower people, to get them to think as critically engaged citizens rather than assume that knowledge and education are merely about the learning of skills - a reductive concept that substitutes training for education and reinforces the flight from reason and the goose-stepping reflexes of an authoritarian mindset.
There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.
When I started criticizing Donald Trump when he got more popular on the right, one of the most things that I discovered was how many people were mad at me for not living down to their expectations. There are a lot of pundits on the right who think their job is to be a cheerleader for their team. That is not my job. My job is to tell the truth as I see it, and that is gotten a lot of people angry.
I just don't trust any of it. Every time I read something about how there's been another ridiculous climb of the Dow Jones, there's a part of me that goes, “This can't be good.” None of this is real money. You know what I mean? It's not like there's actually more of anything. It's just ideas. When people are getting richer and richer but they're not actually producing anything, it can't end well.
I learned early that business is business and politics is politics. The proof is how few important businessmen have made good politicians. They may think that they are very smart about everything because they made millions of dollars by digging a hole in the ground and finding oil, but the talent and luck needed to become rich are not the same talent and luck needed to succeed on Parliament Hill.
Unfortunately, the business is such that, as far as studios are concerned, they judge one quote-unquote black movie on how other ‘black’ movies have done, even if they have nothing to do with each other It’s too bad we can’t do well on our own merit when it comes to the studios. They don’t like to take risks and, unfortunately, we’re still considered a huge risk, even though I don’t think we are.
One of the great things about the longer you do a character, the more the writers start to understand your kind of character ticks and things that you like to do. The most exciting thing I think for a writer is when the characters just start speaking for themselves. You sit down at your keyboard and just stuff starts jumping out of their mouths. They just sort of wrote the scripts for themselves.
I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly.
You must do the asana with your soul. How can you do an asana with your soul? We can only do it with the organ of the body that is closest to the soul - the heart. So a virtuous asana is done from the heart and not from the head. Then you are not just doing it, but you are in it. Many people try to think their way into an asana, but you must instead feel your way into it through love and devotion
If you have loans, the first thing you want to do is say, "Okay, look I have a credit card, if I really need to borrow, I have this emergency money that I can get, but for now there is no reason for me to keep cash at zero percent interest rate and at the same time, pay all of this money out. So, I think people need to figure out quickly how to pay loans and how much cash they should really keep.
Stand-up is an art but since it's humor and it's funny - a lot of guys that don't think it's art are probably coming from the angle that they don't want to take it so seriously. I've always looked at it as an art but I don't look at it as a pretentious art. I understand it has to be taken lightly because it is just comedy in the end, but the good stand-up comics are someone with something to say.
It's so hard to get started creatively - it's really hard to get those first ideas out. You just have to do it over and over again, and hopefully better ones start to come. Also, anytime a good idea comes up, for a long time I think, "Oh, my God, that was so lucky that I thought of that idea, whew, I hope that happens again." The more you work at it, the more it happens, but it still feels lucky.
I think there's no question that historians create; they would tell you that, I think. If I'm trying to imagine an imperial Roman position, it's much easier to imagine the poor schlub who's not even sure why he's doing what he's doing than it is to imagine Caesar. At least for me. And I'm intrigued, too, by the position of the poor schlub who *still* finds himself supporting the imperial project.
To hear people talk, you would think no one ever did anything but love each other. But when you look for it, when you search out this love everyone is always talking about, it is nowhere to be found; and when someone looks for love from you, you find you are not able to give it, you are not able to hold the trust and dreams they want you to hold, any more than you could cradle water in your arms.
The average person might articulate them differently, but we all think about interpersonal relationships in one way or another. Writers just express that in different ways and capture it in different ways. To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is to hope that your interests in some sense link up with the culture around you.
For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.
J.J. Abrams wanted me to do a part in Lost and we probably had three meetings, and I finally turned it down, but it wasn't because I didn't like television or Lost, although I think I said to J.J., "I don't want to be in Hawaii and have an insurance person tell me I'm not allowed to go free dive and spear fishing." That would be the worst kind of torture in the world. But I don't hate television.
In looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.
If you were going to be attracted to a mystical faith which involved the contemplative life, Buddhism would be quite reasonable. But then, not everybody is a budding mystic. In fact, it's pretty certain that very few people are. So another kind of religion, one that was perhaps more pragmatic and service-oriented, might appeal to those others. So I think you have to take your values into account.
To live fully your well-read life -at any age- it is essential to take your selection of books seriously. When you drift from book to book, you're lulled into thinking that this lack of focus is right and natural - but it's as wrong as can be. Some serendipity in your reading is delightful, but if you wanted to build a house, would you wait for the materials to assemble themselves? - Steve Leveen
I do not think science has to make any apologies. It looks at the world and tells it like it is. And we all live longer, better lives because of this dispassionate view. Sure, it commands awe and provides inspiration. Still, I would rather be operated on by a surgeon who sees me as an assemblage of atoms than one who lovingly tries to manipulate what he or she imagines are my vital energy fields.
I'm optimistic, though. Now, with the Arab Spring, I think that people in the region are beginning to overturn some of these clichés, and Western editors are starting to catch up. We're seeing some exceptions to the stereotypes, like Elizabeth Rubin's great piecein Newsweek, "The Feminists in the Middle of Tahrir Square." But an article like that shouldn't be the exception. It should be the rule.
I really think kids should understand that music is like learning the alphabet. You put small letters together to make words, and then you use these words to create a story, but with music. And they really need to know how to mix and match those letters and how to come up with something that is really interesting, or speak in metaphors as poets do to show us something maybe we didn't think about.
I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. Brian Sibley: Or brains even? Oh gosh, yes, brains is one of the least. You can be a lovely person without brains, absolutely lovely. Kindness - that simple word. To be kind - it covers everything, to my mind. If you're kind that's it.
People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film... Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be?
I think this..."perfectionist gene" that too many young women have holds them back, and instead they should be really aiming for "good enough." You don't have to be perfect. Most men never think like that. They're just trying to figure out what's the opening and how they can seize it. They're not thinking about, Oh my gosh, I'm not perfect, my hair's not perfect today, I wore the wrong shoes. No.
People who think they can just do a non-stop flight to mystical, non-dual thinking, to get it out without going through the process, are usually not right. That's airy-fairy thinking. They have to wait until they are hurt themselves, or they are cheated, or lied to or betrayed, and they will see that their non-dual thinking is not tested, or truly a gift of the spirit. It's simply fuzzy thinking.
I think that if your tenure case depends on your proving what you thought was a mathematical theorem and the proposed theorem turns out to be false just before your tenure decision, and you want to get tenure very badly, there is a sense in which it's perfectly understandable and reasonable of you to wish the proposed theorem were true and provable, even if it's logically impossible for it to be.
You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.
I love thinking about things subtextually and I actually - like for instance when I write, I actually, I'm not very analytical about it. I don't ever deal with the subtext because I just know it's there so I don't have to deal with it. I just keep it about the scenario. I keep it on the surface, on my concerns. And one of the fun things is is when I'm done with everything, like now, for instance.
I think all of us would agree that a lot of Christian radio sounds the same. A lot of music that comes out of Nashville kind of has a little bit of the same vibe. Because I don't live in Nashville, I surround myself with a culture and an influence that's outside that bubble. So when the church hears it, it's refreshing, and when the world hears it, it sounds like something they want to listen to.
My relationship to the desecration of the earth was very theoretical and intellectual until I got sick. I could never watch anything about polar bears dying or the death of bees. There were certain things I knew I couldn't go near because they were too devastating. But I don't think until I got cancer did I get it in my body, what was happening to the earth. I finally went: "Oh! Earth! Organism!"
Quiet time and solitude are vital to helping me keep perspective. I consider myself fortunate to have so much quiet built into my profession. I spend long hours by myself at my easel. And while I work, I think-of the future, of my loved ones, of God's goodness and the many exciting opportunities that surround me. I ponder the challenges I face, the needs of others, the direction my life is going.
Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.
When you're dodging, you're "afraid of getting hit." When you're attacking, you're "afraid of hitting me." When you're protecting someone, you're "afraid of them dying." It's pathetic! You can't give into fear in a fight! When you're dodging, think "I won't let you hit me!" When you're protecting someone, think "I won't let you die!" When you're attacking, think "I will cut you!" --Urahara Kisuke
So basically, it just really represents our band and we didn't even think about that when we decided to call it 'Warpaint'. And then through getting asked questions about "why is that song called 'Warpaint'?" - then we realised, "oh my god! THAT'S why!" And we didn't even know why... but that's why! And then 'Shadows' is just... I love that song and it's personal to me. I love how it turned out!!
I think the most takes I've ever done would probably be maybe 10, on like a big studio movie where you can do those. But after a while it's like, "It's not gonna get any better, this is what it is," the light's just gonna dull from your eyes. I think the more you do it, the less the actors listen to each other because then you start memorizing the other person's lines and you start getting bored.
I'll just talk and talk for an hour, an hour and half, until funny things come out of my mouth - often things that I don't think will be funny, often things that I just thought were sentences, turn out to be funny, because they're the sentences of an idiot. There's level of self-awareness that develops, and I write down things that were funny, usually when I'm on stage, and that becomes the show.
In cooking I found my mentor in this great chef, Albert Roux. I think this is a very important thing in life, to find someone who can steer you because to find it all by yourself is quite a difficult and slow process. That's not to say you won't ever get there, but to find a great coach, a great mentor, someone to show you the way and to open a few windows and doors, is a wonderful thing in life.
When I'm taking the subway to my improv shows I will be writing in my notebook different actions that I see people doing on the train whether it's eating yogurt or looking at where their stop is, or tripping or holding a baby. It's not preparing scenes and ideas as much as it is stoking your brain to think observantly. Just to place observations in your head, so that they are available somewhere.
Everybody who has dealt with China over an extended period of time has come to more or less the same conclusions. There are nuances of differences, but not fundamental differences. I think that President Bush was heading in this direction, and I have no doubt that he will again wind up in this position. But right now he has to be preoccupied with the atrocity committed in New York and Washington.
In marriage you got to go through the same struggles as a relationship, that's if the relationship is real, because there's a lot of non-real relationships going on in the world right now. And I think that's just because of the day and age we're in, a lot of these relationships are taking place over text messages, it's not real substance. But when you got a real one, it's already like a marriage.
I still feel needles in my back when I think about all the horrible disasters that would have befallen me if I had permanently moved to San Francisco and rented a big house, joined the company dole, become national-affairs editor for some upstart magazinethat was the plan around 1967. But that would have meant going to work on a regular basis, like nine to five, with an officeI had to pull out.
I just think we as consumers of information media must be very clear what it is we are consuming. Whether we are choosing to get our information by listening to people fight about it. Or whether we're choosing to get it by listening to the facts or watching the facts as they're laid out and then reaching our own conclusions. It's very different ways of info gathering, but it's not all journalism.
[My poems] of course, it's symbolic, in the way that things in a poem can be - that is, pointing to something beyond its mere ordinary meaning, while also retaining all the qualities of that ordinary meaning. In other words, it's a bear, but it's also suggesting something else, just by virtue of the attention to it. But it's not "symbolic" in that way we are taught to think about things in poems.