I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instead I wanted it to be, first and foremost, a thing that I lived.
I really was kind of like a musical nerd. I would watch VH1's 'Behind The Music.' That was heavy when I was a kid. I would sit up and want to watch that all day instead of going outside sometimes.
Twenty years ago I wanted to move to a nice place so our Charley would grow up a nice boy and learn a profession. But instead we live in a jungle, so he can only be a wild animal. D'you think I picked the East Side like Columbus picked America?
Japanese people cut their energy use by 25 percent immediately after Fukushima. They showed there was huge opportunity there. And instead, the government simply wants to get those plants up and running again.
Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.
Many developing countries continue to be burdened by high percentages of their population living in poverty. Yet, instead of addressing this root cause of conflict, many states, ironically, increase their military might in order to control increasingly desperate populations.
Simply expanding Medicaid does not improve health care outcomes. In Louisiana, instead we're helping people getting better paying jobs so they can provide for their own health care.
Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.
Even though 'SmackDown' has been kind of like the Internet darling, I believe that if they had three hours instead of two, they would find out that it's tough to be a darling when you've got that massive three-hour anchor around your neck.
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present.
Growing up in the Sacramento Valley in the '70s, we were all pretty big into cars. Of course, I had to nerd out and be a fan of Bob Tullius' Group 44 Jaguars instead of Corvettes/Camaros.
I recommend tidying by category, not by place. For example, instead of deciding that today you'll tidy a particular room, set goals such as 'clothes today, books tomorrow.'
I don't run a non-profit. There are lots of non-profits in America - in Detroit, parts of Wall Street, etc. I run a not for profit. We're a business. The only difference is that instead of selling soap or sneakers, we sell hope and leadership.
I would do a 'Pitch Perfect 29', where the Bellas take on the Spaniards instead of the Germans. All the girls would have to learn Spanish. I'll teach them!
It's as if we live in a house which has a vast treasury in one of its rooms. Only we've forgotten about it. So, instead of living a life of royalty, we go about in poverty.
In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.
Instead of isolating our school and our many subjects from the every day world, we intend to plant it not merely in the French capital, but in what for next summer at least will be the focal point, the capital of the entire civilized world.
I have no interest in feeling like a trophy. Money itself has never been attractive to me; instead, I prefer ambition and integrity.
St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet - as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud.
I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I'm handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I've got to consider how it's going to affect people. How it's going to affect me, as well. Because it's like a cycle.
I eat eight times a day. But it's what my intake is. I eat all the time, but it's good stuff. You want to eat that chocolate? You want to eat that dessert? Have that apple or vegetable instead.
When I left college, I though that I would be immediately embraced by the film world and instead found myself sitting in a squat for three years not knowing what to do with my life.
If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead, I'm flying a desk.
You write in songs what you're too scared to write in real life, and then you sing the songs to loads of people instead of telling it to the person you should be telling it to... Songs are a great way of dealing with those issues but kind of a coward's way as well.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
I should be, right now, a normal 17-year-old sitting in class in high school. Instead, I'm recording, and it's so exciting for me. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing right now.
Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the good life. And I think, for many people, that wake-up call takes the form of an illness.
We're talking about growing up in regular families, dreaming about better things, instead of popping bottles in the club and spending a lot of money that you don't have while living in your mother's basement.
I find solace in animals. I have got a stray dog at home called Candy. I picked it up while I was waiting at the airport one day. I always wanted to have a 'macho' dog but got this sweet little thing instead.
Basketball would have been the natural sport to play, but it's a little too aggressive for me, so instead I dabbled in volleyball and some good old-fashioned Roller Derby.
In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.
Instead of inventing a gobbledygook password, you join three simple words that come from a thought known only to you. If one day you were driving to work and ran over a frog that ended up flat, you might choose 'frog work flat.'
I don't intimidate anyone. Instead, I try to get people to believe in themselves.
The S.B.A. does not lend directly to businesses, but instead backs loans to encourage banks to invest in small businesses as part of a nearly $90 billion portfolio.
I think that it'd be nice for other Asians to support other Asian artists and help each other instead of pull each other down.
I never rehearse scenes with the whole ensemble, because I need to preserve some surprise. Instead, I work with the cast individually on their characters.
