The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it. Your successful past will block your visions of the future.
I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.
I've buried six Guardian Angels who have been shot and killed in the line of duty. I was stalked myself, had a gunman go pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, five hollow point bullets, God save me. What do you think this is? This isn't Zimmerman. But unfortunately, he's become the face of Block Watch, Crime Watch.
It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block.
The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.
I've never experienced writer's block. When it's going really well, my body temperature goes up, and I'm flushed. I get quite delirious.
I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.
In just six weeks from the time the design was started, we had the motor on the block testing its power.
We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.
I go back to things all the time. It's really nice, too, like when I'm going through some kind of a writer's block, and I'm feeling uninspired, I go to some of my oldest songs from over the years and sift through them, and one thing that's very nice is to see how I've grown up a little bit. A little bit.
This is where the block chain is most useful and revolutionary: It helps us to overcome the problem of mutual trust in exchange, which will, in turn, make many of our modern central institutions unnecessary.
I spend days with writers' block. It is a problem.
With two books a year, I don't have time for writer's block.
In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.
In this time of budget cuts, we cannot forget that basic science is a building block for scientific innovation and economic growth in the information age.
By the time I was a teenager, when I went outside the house, it was about hip-hop all the time. Nothing but hip-hop, block parties.
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.
I block out a good amount of time - could be 6 or 8 months - and I just write. I do a lot of traveling, and I do a lot of co-writing with different writers just to start getting ideas out and kind of get a little bit of direction as far as where I'm going to go with the album.
Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my seating because of my trips to Hanoi.
My experience as a newspaper reporter was invaluable in terms of getting me to the kind of writing I do now. It gave me a work ethic of writing every day and pushing through difficult creative times. I mean, there's no writer's block allowed in a newsroom.
Marriage is all about knowing the ins and outs and the intimate details, and your wife is supposed to be the person you know best. But my brother and I think alike, know everything about one another, and when we get together, we block everything else out. Nothing exists in our world except for us.
The current administration has made the decision to cut dollars going for community development block grants, for various incentives to bring cities back.
This marched was planned to be non violent and non confrontational, and gladly it stayed that way. What really impressed me was the self discipline of the Black Block.
I can walk down the street, and 85 percent of the people on the block are really quite oblivious to me. They either think I'm probably an actor or else I installed their storm windows two years ago, or I work at their bank, or maybe I'm their cousin Marie's gynecologist. Then, to the other 15 percent of those people on the street, I'm a rock star.
The big polluters are confident in their grip on Congress. They have basically achieved control of the Republican Party, and as a result, they are basically able to block action in Congress that the public needs and the country deserves.
My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness.
Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block.
Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.
Racism may be as systemic as it always was. It is the great problem of America. It's the one stumbling block that I don't believe was ever smoothed over.
I've been around the block a lot and I've had a merry trail for 55 years.
If you're a writer, the insight of other writers - if there's some kind of Holy Grail message on how to deal with writer's block or how to deal with any problem that can come up - whether you're writing about yourself or a group of people, I find that very interesting.
I write for three or four hours and then hopefully I'll have something. Then I draw for the rest of the afternoon... I literally block out Wednesday-Thursday-Friday - I more or less disappear.
I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.
This was something that was obsessing me and creating a writer's block. To get involved and get stuck in, get the proper information about what's going on has really helped.
If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication - and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.
There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City.
