Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had so many other things I could fall back on as an entrepreneur (with multiple businesses). When I finally was true to myself and what I wanted to do - and acting was it - there was nothing else I could think of. I thought "If I fail, I'm falling hard (because) I don't have anything else to fall back on. Am I going to accept that?"...I never looked back. I never (let myself) put it in my mind to fail.
The idea that the United States of American might shut down its government over abortion and funding to an organization that is 0.01% of the U.S. budget seems completely insane. Anyone looking at this debate around the world is thinking 'What is this country doing? They have three wars going on, they're trying to manage major problems and they're thinking of shutting down their government over abortion?'
Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.
I knew very little about Rugby. But, I think it helps in terms of an American audience the game is enough like football in that it's a battle for field position and you score by running into what looks a lot like an end zone. I think in terms the nuance of the game, Americans won't get that stuff. I think in terms of the peanut butter and jelly version of what you need to know, I think it's pretty clear.
Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
I think Google's founders are both a couple of guys with some high ideals which have been to some degree reflected in the way the company has been run in terms of its having a very good workplace and good employee programs, and now that they're going public they want in some ways to be able to ensure that that kind of approach continues. So they've effectively put in place this notion of "Don't Be Evil".
Well, it was an interesting phenomenon, because I come from a very union town - I come from Chicago. And have been involved in unions most of my life. I think in a lot of ways unions aren't necessary anymore, because what they were started for, I think a lot of those conditions don't exist. And this union is so odd, because any sort of fight we do in this union is not for us, it's for future generations.
Nelson Mandela once remarked that he befriended his jailers, those grim, khaki-clad overseers of his decades of hard labor in a limestone quarry, by "exploiting their good qualities." Asked if he believed all people were kind at their core, he responded, "There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse their inherent goodness." If that sounds like wishful thinking, well, he actually did it.
I think I actually made a very kind gesture out of nowhere; I decided in the middle of that match that for every ace I hit I want to donate money. I just think people should honestly look at themselves before they judge another person. I've never been spoiled. I want a Range Rover very bad, but I refuse to spend the money to buy a Range...The diamonds are borrowed. I won't buy them because I'm too cheap.
To get a person's real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes... If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves.
A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything... What they don't tell you, and are maybe unaware of, is that they are allowed to write freely because their beliefs conform to the... standard doctrinal system, and then, yes, they are allowed to write freely and are not coerced.
I think it’s really important, and it’s a lesson I didn’t learn until my late teens: Whatever bands that you love, go find out what bands they love, and what bands turned them on, and then you really start getting into the human aspect of it because the further back you go in time the less technology you had, and consequently the better records you had. There’s this incredible library of music thank god.
When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy--that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.
I didn't ask to become a role model, but it was thrust upon all of us, regardless of whether you acknowledge it. You have to come to a decision as an adult and say, "I've got to live my life." There's nothing wrong with thinking ahead and being aware of how it might affect somebody - everything from a post to where you have dinner to who you're with. But these aren't things you can let consume your life.
It was in the spring that Josephine and I had first loved each other, or, at least, had first come into the full knowledge that we loved. I think that we must have loved each other all our lives, and that each succeeding spring was a word in the revelation of that love, not to be understood until, in the fullness of time, the whole sentence was written out in that most beautiful of all beautiful springs.
I think the greatest work in social psychology from the 1950s and '60s is enormously important. I wish every high school kid could take a course in social psychology. I think we're making enormous strides in understanding the brain. These aren't yet giving us great insights, but I feel like we're on the verge of it. In five or ten years this basically searching the brain is really going to change things.
Darius didn't have any trouble finding the Street Cats building. It was a cozy-looking square brick building with big front windows crowded with cat stuff. I made a mental note to pick up a little something for Nala from their gift shop. My cat was grumpy enough without her thinking that I'd been cheating on her (translation: I would smell like a zillion other cats) and hadn't even brought her a present.
People get overwhelmed with folklore as fact. Take the Exodus. The Exodus did not occur. It could not have occurred. Wasn't necessary for it to occur. The Jews walked into Africa over a 16-mile land until they built the Suez Canal - that land is still there. Why would they have to leave by the sea. They didn't come by the sea. Certain people think you are against their religion when you use common sense.
More than any other drummer, Ringo Starr changed my life. The impact and memory of that band on Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 will never leave me. I can still see Ringo in the back moving that beat with his whole body, his right hand swinging off his sock cymbal while his left hand pounds the snare. He was fantastic, but I think what got to me the most was his smile. I knew he was having the time of his life.
You don't watch home movie for the technique, you watch because it's reminiscing on good moments you spent with your friends. It reflects you. It belongs to you. So I was thinking people could, instead of spending their money to go and see a blockbuster, make their own movies. Collect the money and make a new one every week. I thought it would be nice to create a world that makes this construct possible.
God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge.
Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes!
I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed Love me so much as now you say you do? Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea, Ask of the roses if they love the rain, Ask of the little lark, that will not sing Till day break, if it loves to see the day: And yet, these are but empty images, Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire So great that all the waters of the main Can not avail to quench it.
There are poets who believe that you shouldn't engage at all in any cause. And there's something to be said for that. Because you don't want to - I think most political poetry is very bad. And it's very bad because you know too much to start with. You have a sense that you're right, and you're trying to tell other people what's right. And I think that's always kind of fundamentalism, and I don't like it.
I don't know that it's a lack of creativity so much as it is , a lack of resources. And maybe a little bit of a lack of will but when you look at what fills every hour, let's just take CNN as an example, not because I think they're particularly egregious, but, they're sort of the ongoing hour, hour, hour. Why do they give us bulletins every single day on the latest poll? Very easy to cover a poll, right?
See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.
Get into something that's really personal that means something to you, where you have something to say and is something really individualized. I wish I was more aware of that when I started my career instead of doing a few things I was told would be good for me. And they weren't, because it left me empty, so I didn't do a good job anyways. I think that's what's key to what we do: It's got to be personal.
I think we need to address greenhouse gas emissions. But I try to get involved in issues where I see a legislative result... So I just leave the issue alone because I don't see a way through it, and there are certain fundamentals, for example nuke power, that people on the left will never agree with me on. So why should I waste my time when I know the people on the left are going to reject nuclear power?
Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and to die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It's because spiders think this is funny, and they don't want you ever to forget them.
Can't stay long, Mother," he said. "I'm up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves-" "Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?" said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. "You should have said something, we had no idea." "Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it," said the other twin. "Once-" "Or twice-" "A minute-" "All summer-" "Oh, shut up," said Percy the Prefect.
I never thought of myself as being that good looking, I was an actor, people saw me on television, and then they start to think you're good looking because of that presentation. I was no better looking before the show, than after - and before the TV show I couldn't get a date to save my life. So what changed? Did I suddenly become more good looking? No. I got lucky, I got a TV show. That's what happened.
Cinema doesn't connect with the body as artists have in two thousand years of painting, using the nude as the central figure which the ideas seem to circulate around. I think it is important to somehow push or stretch or emphasize, in as many ways as I can, the sheer bulk, shape, heaviness, the juices, the actual structure of the body. Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.
Duties concern things that are voluntary. I do think that if you have a moral duty to bring me back the book you borrowed, that implies, roughly, that your doing so depends on your wanting to do so: if you want to bring me the book, you will. This is not the case if you are stuck at some airport due to a snowstorm, far away from me. This, however, is not the same as "ought" implying a metaphysical "can".
Coming from a background as unique as mine, the first challenge is being able to identify chaos as chaos. For the first half of my life, I interpreted chaos as normal. Today, I am aware that I have triggers: a default way of thinking that is often not relative to the immediate moment. Therefore, in the midst of chaos, I have learned to relinquish all my premature cognitive commitments and become present.
Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life.
On the last album, I didn't want to disturb the melody with too many stories. This time, I wanted to know if I was able to create images with words, with the sound of words.(...) I think that’s a good thing when the one who is listening, is feeling it in a different way that the one who creates. We are all listening with different perspectives.(...) I don’t want to impose my subjectivity to the listener.
When people talk about people being left behind - middle wages have not gone up for years, and we should recognize that, and there I think we need growth and skills - but there are these other people who have been left behind. When I say out loud, "Fifty percent of inner-city schoolkids do not graduate from high school," that is a national catastrophe. We should be ringing the alarm bells. It's not fair.
I used to do more melodic stuff, and I used to do more actual rap - like traditional hip hop vocals. I think my method of storytelling has led me to this point, at which I want to pare down my style. I think I give the lyrics more thought, and then when I try to perform the lyrics over the track I'll try it over and over again, and eventually the lyrics will sink into the track by the way I project them.
Indeed, the best practical reason to think that social media can help bring political change is that both dissidents and governments think they can. All over the world, activists believe in the utility of these tools and take steps to use them accordingly. And the governments they contend with think social media tools are powerful, too, and are willing to harass, arrest, exile, or kill users in response.
I think political situations usually work their way into my writing, but not necessarily in an explicit way. The environment is so chaotic now. There is someone so entirely unreliable in charge, and reliable only in the fact that Thing - I don't say his name - is a pathological narcissist. He's going to do whatever he can to defend himself and whatever will make him look good. That's what matters to him.
the New Englander landed on a stony, barren tract, and a large share of his strength during two centuries has gone to force a living out of it. Hence he has come to regard economy - a necessary unpleasant quality at best - as the chief of virtues. He has cultivated habits which verge on closeness in dealing with food, and with the expression of feeling, and even - his enemies think - with feeling itself.
Another step had her backed up against the wall, and he braced his arms on both sides of her. "I'm beginning to look forward to this marriage, just so I can spend the rest of my life making you miserable." Alexandra was too angry to be intimidated. "Misery loves company, sweetheart," she shot back. "So don't think I'll be suffering mine alone." She slipped out from under his arm and marched out the door.
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish... The trouble is you won't fight. You've given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there's something just as inevitable as death, and that's life. Life, life, life. Think of all the power that's in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it.
Directors like William Friedkin (Killer Joe), Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike) and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) got in touch with me and wanted me to be part of their films. That was a whole new chapter for me. I didn’t chase any of those films and it made me think that I was right to take a chance, say no to the kind of thing I had grown tired of doing, and wait until something good came around. And it did.
Sometimes I think the Congress feels that if you only decided tomorrow to switch to wind power that in two years we'd be getting 80 percent of our electricity from wind power. It's nonsense. Normally it takes 20 to 30 years after a new technology is demonstrated and deployed before it powers even 15 or 20 percent of the grid. There's this long lag time, and we haven't even decided which directions to go.
Sergey and I founded Google because we're super optimisitc about the potential for technology to make the world a better place. Think about how many people are underserved by transportation today, like those with disabilities, and how self driving cars will transform their lives. Or the wasted time you sit in your car every day commuting to and from work. Or the deaths and injuries that could be avoided.
Among other things, I'm thinking "I'm a child of God." That's amazing. And "I'm not only a child of God, but God loves me." The hardest part for me is to realize that while God loves me, and I am a child of God, I have to see the bigot and the brute and the rapist, and whether he or she knows it or not, I have to know that that person is a child of God. That is part of the responsibility - and it's hard.
At the beginning of the book [The Dissemblers], Ivy [Wilkes] has a long way to go in order to achieve self-sufficiency. Although she is very independent, even somewhat of a loner, she is very affected by other peoples' opinions. At the opening of the book, her ideas of success and achievement are largely defined by the approval of others; over the arc of the story, I think that begins to change a little.
We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy - the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell.
When I perform on stage I do achieve quite a variety of ways of singing. I was interested in trying to replicate that in the studio environment. I think it is an interesting alternative position, just to stretch people's imagination, myself included, as to who is actually singing the song. It's not to create alter-egos or characters - it always feels like me, even when the voice is extremely manipulated.