When I was younger, I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence, I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening, so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people.
And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps.
They, that unnamed 'they,' they've knocked me down but I got up. I always get up-and I swear when I went down quite often I took the fall; nothing moves a mountain but itself. They, I've long ago named them me.
History never repeats itself in the same way.
Black Lives Matter is proving itself to seek only one end - and that is discord, alienation among Americans, rise in hate, and destruction of community bonds. The relative increase in justice afforded black Americans is of little concern, save as a convenient veneer for their anti-democratic mission.
The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.
Whatever the economy needs to maintain itself, the government will do it.
It is time for corporate America to become 'the third pillar' of social change in our society, complementing the first two pillars of government and philanthropy. We need the entire private sector to begin committing itself not just to making profits, but to fulfilling higher and larger purposes by contributing to building a better world.
In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.
Why did I not stop to have children? I suppose because the opportunity didn't present itself. Yes, many women feel they are not complete without having children, but I have different creative outlets.
I think the term 'friend' itself has lost almost all of its exclusivity. Even the term 'good friend' is overused. Adding the word 'vital' provides a clear definition of what we mean.
A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, 'The Clock' is more than a movie or even a work of art. It is so strange and other-ish that it becomes a stream-of-consciousness algorithm unto itself - something almost inhuman.
I was very interested in the relationship between the man who speaks and the woman who listens. I was drawn to the idea that the relationship between a man and a woman can be something like a war itself, very cruel and violent.
Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.
It's odd that invoking the possibility of alien influences should itself be a sign of madness. I don't see the need for it to explain history on earth, but I can't see any reason why the universe shouldn't be full of life.
The Gaelic language itself depends very much on ear and rhythm, and when those who are thinking in Gaelic speak in English, they get the same rhythm.
The medical profession is - and knows itself to be - endemically conservative and conformist.
Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate.
I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.
Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.
It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.
Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself.
Canada now calls itself an 'emerging energy superpower.' In reality, it is nothing more than a Third World energy supermarket.
Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral.
It's great to talk about how good things are now. But we can't sit on our laurels and expect that our time will sustain itself if we don't do a better job on issues like education... It's absolutely the case that the low cost of college tuition that I was able to enjoy and the financial aid I was able to receive made my education possible.
It is a very serious consideration for a lyricist to step in there and suggest the meaning to a song. The music is speaking for itself.
Soul development depends on attachment and bonding. Every brain and body is genetically wired to develop itself, but the full soul development of brain and body depends on each child receiving the care of between two and five completely bonded caregivers.
When I was 20, journalists would ask me what I would do when I retire from waterpolo. For me this is not just a five- or ten-year-period in my life. This is life itself.
In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.
Social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue. So when the trend leaders of one social niche or another decide the place everyone is socializing has lost its luster or, more important, its exclusivity, they move on to the next one, taking their followers with them.
There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon.
I think India's growth itself will give opportunities for Indian banks to become substantially bigger.
The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it.
Opera combines pretty basic theater and poetry, but the storyline itself is actually quite poetic and, after some digital research, taking that actual content and seeing it as undeniably poetic.
War is not, in itself, a condition so much as the symptom of a condition - that of international anarchy.
