It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.
I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.
For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.
Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.
Playing a show is a monumental hassle. You've got to schlep all your heavy equipment into the van, then you've got to drive for five hours, then you have to schlep all the heavy equipment out of the van, onto the stage, set it up, do the sound check, hang around for three hours, then play the show, which is incredibly draining.
I've been to L.A. before, and I love the sunshine and the fact that people seem so genuinely nice and pleased to see you - which is so different from London. Maybe I'll end up so tired of smiles and helpfulness that I'll long for the rudeness and cynicism of home.
I was not thinking about infinite multipliers when I was 10. But I did have a father who was a Ph.D. in commerce and finance and an intellectual man. And so I had a feeling, probably about the time I went to college, that I would try to be a scholar and teacher, but I didn't know which field.
I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.
I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.
I did a film called 'Days and Nights,' which is a modern-day retelling of and inspired by Chekhov's 'The Seagull.'
It's not an anti-sex trip. Like, we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now.
I usually have a hard time with the fit of off-the-rack suits, thanks to my athletic proportions, but somehow Burberry always fits me perfectly. There's no tailoring really required, which is rare for me.
As best I can tell there was no advance warning of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was the first significant foreign terrorist activity in the U.S. No tip-offs that it was coming.
There is no method by which an average citizen can effectively fight the White House in the media.
Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict.
There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
The First Amendment is not an altar on which we must sacrifice our children, families, and community standards. Obscene material that is not protected by the First Amendment can and must be prohibited.
A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.
Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!
I hope to devote all of my spare time, which ordinarily would go to research, my summers, and every ounce of strength I can muster to further the project.
That which makes people dissatisfied with their condition, is the chimerical idea they form of the happiness of others.
I'm active in PAX, which is a gun awareness organization. We treat gun safety as a public health issue.
Blackbeard is probably the most infamous pirate who ever lived. He's one of those characters for which most of your work is done before you start.
Whether or not evolution is compatible with faith, science and religion represent two extremely different worldviews, which, if they coexist at all, do so most uncomfortably.
There is a reasonable concern that posting raw data can be misleading for those who are not trained in its use and who do not have the broader perspective within which to place a particular piece of data that is raw.
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.
The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.
I was an amateur wrestler, which I loved. It was my passion, but I started really late; I was a junior in high school when I began.
I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
Money buys many things... The best of which is freedom.
