Anyone who's stood on the floor of a set knows nothing gets done by itself.
It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.
I have no interest in feeling like a trophy. Money itself has never been attractive to me; instead, I prefer ambition and integrity.
Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.
When I was first approached about doing an autobiography, I said, 'absolutely not.' But when I sat down, memories came pouring out. It wrote very quickly - I think there was an emotional impulse, because once I started in, the story itself carried me along. It was a very intense writing period and took a year and change to finish.
In the dream life, you don't deliberately set out to dream about a house night after night; the dream itself insists you look at whatever is trying to come into visibility.
If there were no human nature, then there would be nothing for deliberate effort to be applied to. If there were no deliberate effort, then human nature would not be able to beautify itself.
Jellies are to cold cookery what consommes and stock are to hot. If anything, the former are perhaps more important: for a cold entree - however perfect it may be in itself - is nothing without its accompanying jelly.
The State Department has promised they will never have another temporary mission facility like the one in Benghazi that is so lightly protected. But at the same time, history tends to repeat itself here, and so it might not repeat itself in exactly the same way as Benghazi.
In a marketplace where it's so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand.
With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs.
For much of the latter part of the 20th century, Australia seemed to be opening up to something large and good. It believed itself a generous country, the land of the 'fair go.'
Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline and sport is not spared by this law.
On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.
Everyone goes to the same exhibitions and the same parties, stays in the same handful of hotels, eats at the same no-star restaurants, and has almost the same opinions. I adore the art world, but this is copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking.
My track record speaks for itself.
'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.
The States is run by the Federal Reserve, an institution that answers only to itself and to a few large banks. It's modelled on the Bank of England. Ben Franklin said that one of the main reasons America revolted was to get away from the Bank of England, the mother of all central banks - the most pernicious and insidious of all.
Modern design becomes the eye catcher because it's out of context, it is something newborn and fresh, something people have never seen before. I mean, that in itself is the way we should sort of stimulate the senses of society, this urban condition.
ISIS itself regularly fuels hatred of gay people and violence towards them. It broadcasts gruesome executions of homosexuals thrown blindfolded from rooftops.
Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless.
A country that cannot feed itself cannot have self-pride, and in the mid-'60s 20 percent of all the wheat produced in America came into India. We were agriculturally a basket case. And 15 years later, 20 years later, we have become an agricultural power. This is the famous Green Revolution.
What's interesting about the shift from an industrial age to a technological age is that we keep inventing new media: movies, records, radio, television, the Internet, and now ebooks - and one of the things that's most interesting about the invention of a new medium is watching it reinvent itself as it penetrates the culture.
Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
China's own recent history proves that when it opens itself, there is nothing its people cannot accomplish. A more open China will lead to a more prosperous and stable China. That's good for China, the United States and, indeed, the entire world.
For too long, opponents of the PATRIOT Act have transformed this law into a grossly distorted caricature that bears no relation to the legislation itself.
I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself.
The party lines don't change, that's what makes them a party and you'd be a fool to think that just because there's a black man in there it's not gonna change the real foundation of the system. Especially when you look at his largest contributor to his campaign, AIG, one of the culprits in the economic meltdown itself.
I knew very little or nothing about the Olympics. Having qualified was itself a big achievement for me, and then being there was quite overwhelming. Although I lost in the opening round, but the fact that I fought well was enough for me to take away from Athens.
Drag is there to remind culture not to take itself too seriously. All of this is illusion.
I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms - they are not usually dashed-off. Sometimes I'm surprised by the high, poetic quality of Twitter - it lends itself to a surreal sort of self-expression.
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
'Islamism' itself is such a broad and nearly meaningless word as used by the mainstream Western press, including everything from Turkey's AKP party to al Qaeda.
When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.
I learn about history and religion and politics. It keeps me tuned in. If I hear something on the news, I'm like, 'Oh my God, this is what somebody is talking about in the play that I'm about to do in two hours.' The act itself - of rehearsing, failing, and still persisting and trying to create - keeps me curious, keeps me searching.
If indeed this is the work of God... then it's a crisis that calls for the church to be its very best self, and not worry about risking itself for the right thing.