I suspect political fiction is at its best precisely when it doesn't preach, but restricts itself to showing the reader a different way of life or thought, and merely makes it clear that this is an end-point or outcome for some kind of political creed.
Justice is the object of government, and those who support the government, must be agreed as to the justice to be executed by it, or they cannot rightfully unite in maintaining the government itself.
When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.
Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it.
We are all afraid for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do.
Every era needs a genre through which it understands itself.
If you start thinking of stress as not a bad thing but inevitable, resulting in change that itself leads to transformation that leads to sharp and radical changes... it can be a very useful way of thinking.
As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.
Hockey suffers from being compared to itself in ways that other sports are not. Every four years, some of us fawn over Olympic hockey, a great event with bigger rinks, minimal goonishness and national pride in addition to the heightened skills of veritable all-star squads.
Israel has a right to defend itself.
I think you can overthink dealing with fame. To an extent, you've got to put yourself out there, but I feel like your work should really speak for itself, and I don't feel the need to go and make everyone like me because, to be honest, I'm not looking to be friends with the world. I'd much rather people watch the things that I'm in.
Some people think electronic music is cold, but I think that has more to do with the people listening than the actual music itself.
While the hippocampus itself doesn't store memories, it serves to triage our experiences based upon their survival significance.
Every movement, to stay alive - a very difficult thing to do historically - has to find a way to harness that initial surge of emotion and turn it to the hard, steady, un-sexy work of recruiting new members, strategizing, negotiating with those in power, keeping itself going.
I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I'm trying to define because it's somehow fascinating to me in itself. It's more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work.
As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.
The severity of punishments ought to be relative to the state of the nation itself. Stronger and more easily felt impressions have to be made on a people only just out of the savage state. A lightning strike is needed to stop a fierce lion who is provoked by a gunshot.
Life doesn't use detergent to clean itself.
The fight against terror cannot stop as long as terrorism itself is not stopped, but the path of war must change: it must lead directly to terrorists and not be waged on the backs of three million Palestinians.
What amazes me is that you can have 10 different photographers in the same room, and you see 10 different rooms. You realize how much of it is the person's perspective rather than the situation itself.
September 11th has produced only miniature heroes because our culture has freed itself from many of the old, dangerous, elitist fantasies of heroism... But in so doing, we have not only tamed and diminished heroes. We have risked taming and diminishing ourselves.
From my old neighborhood, I learned nothing was guaranteed, not even life itself. You better get it today, because tomorrow is not promised.
Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious.
I always wanted my work to speak for itself, and have opportunities to do interesting work and not just puff pieces.
While history never repeats itself, political patterns do.
Over and over, the economy has determined the extent of our response, but how much value does it place on breathable air, drinkable water, edible food and stable weather and climate? Surely the economy is the means to a better future, not an end in itself. Surely it must be subordinate to a rich, diverse ecosphere that sustains all life.
Even with most finite planning, you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it's staring back at you.
I'm in love with cities. I find them amazing, the quiet co-ordination of thousands of people, going about what we're trying to do, and that organism of the city nurturing human aspiration, and the actual city fabric itself being a special thing rather than just infrastructure.
A very receptive state of mind... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it.
I've always had an uneasy relationship with technology and how it insinuates itself into our lives: for example. I always prefer talking face-to-face with friends than texting or calling, and if I want to get updates on their lives, I don't go to Facebook but meet them in person.
It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one.
Online piracy needs to be dealt with itself, because people are just wholesale stealing people's work and not paying for it. It's very hard to figure out a way to fix it.
I often find it maddening to live in America, in a way that is both amusing and horrifying to me. America clings to versions of itself that are absolutely hypocritical. I can't shake my outrage at it, so I write about it.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.
Hip-hop is limiting itself and that also goes for editorially. Magazines and websites are the gatekeepers of what people think hip-hop is, but they actually end up limiting what hip-hop can be.
