I've been surrounded by a lot of people who felt that external success would result in them feeling good about themselves. But it just seems extremely unfulfilling to me.
I remember very vividly - I wrote about it in one of my books - my first IRA. I contributed $2,000 every year, and in 21 years, the funds in that IRA account grew to $260,000. Seems like sort of a miracle, but it happened.
For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.
Let's be honest, Netflix has stepped up its game up. It seems to have a lot more of an assortment of stuff.
Contradictory as it seems, malnutrition is a key contributor to obesity.
To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.
I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. Religious seems too much like a club.
Men invent means and methods of coming at God's love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
The stigma that used to exist many years ago, that actors from film don't do television, seems to have disappeared. That camera doesn't know it's a TV camera... or even a streaming camera. It's just a camera.
Yellow's more like, I'm not trying to be this sexy vixen or anything, obviously. I'm a very friendly person, and I literally do just want to be your friend. I think all of that is wrapped up in yellow. It seems to work. I like being in it.
It seems to me that women have made an awful lot of progress, but they probably remain underrepresented at the highest levels of most organizations, for a variety of reasons. And it's probably going to take a long time to change that.
I think a lot of guys you see - there seems to be this thing where you can have all the fun in the world, but in the end of the day, there's no one to share it with.
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
I guess I've grown to admire Queen Elizabeth II more. I've always struggled with my feelings about the Royal Family. I am a supporter. I'm not someone who thinks we should get rid of them. But what I've struggled with is the lack of emotionality that the Queen seems to share.
What's great about the geek spirit is that life never seems to stop us, and they never seem to kill our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hunger to experience the world. We keep our sense of humor, we protect our dignity, we talk to our friends about the experience and then we start again fresh the very next day.
I've done other things, but it always seems like my sci-fi projects have been what people respond to the most, because those fans are extraordinary, so passionate.
The heart has a yearning for the unknown, a longing to penetrate the deep shadow and the winding glade, where, as it seems, no human foot has been.
Amazingly enough, athletic achievement is one of those things that seems larger than life at points. I think we all look to sport for inspirations.
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
It seems like the darker the books are, the nicer the person is. People say it's the romance writers you've got to watch out for.
The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That's a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it's all bleakly barren.
It's very important, when everyone else seems to be pigeon-holing you, to try and pigeon-hole yourself.
Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day.
Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.
I think the idea of participating in your own health care and being responsible to the extent you can be of your own health, it seems to me a lot like self-reliance and individual responsibility. This cuts through the partisan divide.
It sometimes seems easier to trace the great general laws of God's government in the passage of events far from us than in those close around us. We see the shape of those far-off constellations, but we cannot group or set in order that to which our own sun belongs.
It's great to listen to men talk about sports or fights or war or even hunting sometimes, but the presence of the other, the presence of art and beauty, which crude masculinity seems to discount, is essential. Real civilization and real manhood seem to me to include those.
Between the three, Facebook is literally everyone I've ever shaken hands with at a conference or kissed on the cheek at Easter. Twitter seems to be everyone I am entertained by or I wish to meet some day. Foursquare seems to be everyone I run into on a regular basis. All three of those social graphs are powerful in their own.
The Broadway audiences are very vocal and seem very engaged. For certain shows, especially with a show like 'The Heiress,' the audience's reactions sound like 'The Jerry Springer Show' sometimes. That seems to be a very New York thing. Oh, there's also the entrance round of applause here, which we don't get too much in London.
I think now what you're seeing is guys that are in the peaks of their careers anywhere from 27 to 35 years old, seems to be when they play their best hockey.
Not only does Hollywood make money - it seems to make better movies during recessions. I'm sure a lot of studio executives wish we could have one every year.
Oh, yeah, I like a high neck. And I like naked backs. It seems very sexy. Red carpets are about being a bit theatrical - having fun rather than being too safe. You have to be brave. Fashion is fun.
Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.
When a role seems fun it's easy to play. It kind of comes organically.
