Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience.
But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.
There was a special challenge in describing the awful childhood of a person who happens to be my own husband. It was very painful at times, for both of us.
Certainly the experiences of Seth and his relationship to his parents and his point of view of the world are very similar to my own and very much based on my experiences at the University of Southern California.
The world of programmers is not going to change on its own.
When I'm working I don't have room to think about myself and my own issues. It's really freeing. There is no room for me, which is really nice.
Apart from Scottish traditional music, I wasn't really influenced by any kind of music. I just basically followed my own instincts.
I have never learned to read or write music so I am not a virtuoso musician like the others you mentioned. I am completely unable to play like them because I never learned classical music, I just developed my own crazy style!
There is no question but that the laws and principles which Solon laid down both foreshadowed and prepared the way for all republics of later ages, including our own.
When I started my own business, my main reason for designing clothes was that I wanted to dress rock stars and the people who went to rock concerts. It didn't go beyond that aspiration at that point.
If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to 'Firefly', make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death.
I do a lot of collaborations and productions, whether it's Switch or Steve Aoki or No ID or Will Smith or No Doubt - I always like to collaborate and be a quality control person for the people 'cause I have my own taste in music and bring that to other peoples' brands and help them learn a little bit.
We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.
All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
I don't want to own something that you can't take into your apartment at night.
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.
There's times when I go, 'We should have done a bunch of videos.'...Regardless of mistakes we've made, we made 'em, and we own 'em.
Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.
I have one rule when adapting any text: nothing gets added; all the words are the original author's own. But in the ordering and recreation of the story, I can do as I please, and to me, the heart and the point of 'Dracula' is appetite.
Too many of Montana's own have fallen in the line of duty fighting radical Islamic terrorists, like 31-year-old husband and father of four, Blackfeet warrior Army Corporal Tony 'Many Hides' of Great Falls.
Ideally if I settled down with a wife I would love to form my own troupe of mini dancers!
God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know His own principle.
It's very difficult for governments to dominate the Internet because it's so difficult to control. People want to be free. People want to hear multiple voices. They want to make their own decisions. And people who see things will report things.
Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.
I needed to find my own worth and shake the image after having done 'Showgirls' at age 21.
Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.
As an actor, I'm my own worst critic, but after awhile, really, when you watch 'Moonrise Kingdom', it's such a fantastic film that you sort of get sucked into the story, and then you kind of forget about everything else.
I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
In order to crash the party and be a clown with your own skit, you had to be there for quite a while.
These days we seem more bound to our bosses than ever before. We even identify our own selves with the jobs we do: 'What do you do?' is the first question we ask each other at parties, as if a job title could express a fundamental truth about our personality.
It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
