'London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.
After one hundred days of confinement following a bone marrow transplant, I rejoiced in taking short walks to a nearby park as I was writing 'Girl in Hyacinth Blue.' The uncertainty of my survival made every blade of grass gorgeous in its green intensity, lifting itself up, doing its part to make the world beautiful.
The blessing of being able to write music and let music speak for itself is you let the melodies and let the lyrics and the groove talk to people instead of me talking to people.
'No' is an entire sentence in itself. No means no, and when somebody says it, you need to stop.
I prefer to sing in the shower 'cause the acoustics are really, really good, I mean, when you're singing against the tile walls then you really hear yourself, hear your voice, you know, throwing itself back at you.
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
If bin Laden is in fact publicly killed, then the US military will find itself standing around with its hands in its pockets, wondering what's supposed to come next.
There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.
Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.
Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.
We cannot let Brussels put itself above the law.
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.
The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right.
I think sometimes what happens is that all of this feeling out of control manifests itself in trying to control your body; whether it's an eating disorder or talking about getting your nose fixed, as if that's going to be the solution to all the pressure.
Awards are so unnecessary because I think we get so much out of our work just by doing it. The work is a reward in itself.
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval 'Carmina Burana' - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.
I want that fifth championship. If that does not present itself, then I'm closer to retirement.
'Guardians of the Galaxy' is tongue-in-cheek and has a sense of humor about itself. But it's nothing like 'Deadpool.' 'Deadpool' is this super-bizarre thing. The best thing about it is that it's R-rated.
I've always believed human blood is red because it really needs to draw attention to itself.
I did extensive, extensive recordings and made a classical CD-ROM set, which is still on the market. For ten years, it was by itself as the cream of the crop of samples.
I saw 'Hamilton' when it was at the Public, and I just wept profusely in my seat because this is a form I love deeply, and to watch it be reinvented in such a genius, gifted way and executed by such a brilliant company of human beings, I was overwhelmed with not just appreciation for the piece of work itself but for the possibility.
The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence. So intelligence is a hard thing to evaluate and it manifests itself in so many different ways. I do think the ability to know how to live a life and not be miserable is a sign of that.
So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
I think that Jews - because they are a distinct, gifted and successful group that differentiates itself from societies in which it lives - are vulnerable wherever the rule of law is not paramount.
But the key thing is that Iraq, while it's got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia.
What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.
We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.
Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.
Spain is finding it very difficult to finance itself with sovereign debt risk premium so high.
We have ourselves begun to put our house in order by banning some experiments that may contain a risk for mankind. We would like to see society take a similar attitude, abandoning selfish practices that are dangerous for society itself.
With the world as it now presents itself, there is something perverse, and probably dysfunctional, about a person who stays in the same house for 40 years. What about the expanding family syndrome, the school-lottery migration, the property portfolio neurosis? Have you no imagination?
In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Everyone in Hollywood wanted a role in this movie. Everyone wanted to have a part in it. I feel so lucky that I got one, but what I find so cool about 'Hunger Games' is that the real star is the story itself.
It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.
