I believe that every character is a setting, a world with moving parts, and on the other hand, every setting is, in fact, a character - a living breathing thing with personality and backstory. The way stories come to life, at least for me, is when these elements commune in relationship to one another.

Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end.

I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.

I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and I was performing at a show there. Jimmy Carter was going to be coming through with his Secret Service detail. The manager pulled me aside, and they didn't want me to shake Jimmy Carter's hand because they were afraid it would make the news if I stole from him.

When it comes to music, movies, literature, paintings, and even Bikram yoga, it's pretty easy to have an opinion about whether something has been copied. Software, on the other hand, was an awkward late addition to the original Copyright Act of 1976, shoehorned into section 102(a) as a 'literary work.'

Having an animal that you fix, knowing that you saved its life or you saved a pet - Like on a dog, these little kids will come, and their dog is just ready to die, and you do something, and they leave happy. The kids are happy, and the little puppy is licking your hand. Those are kind of neat feelings.

How I thrive is very simple. My son brought my perspective back to focusing on and appreciating the simple things in life. It's about just being with my family - whether that's waking up in bed next to my husband under the comforter and just hugging or walking down the street and holding my son's hand.

I know that I make technical mistakes from time to time. It's one of the aspects of my game that I've been working on for years. I think I've managed to reduce the number of those technical mistakes to a minimum, but occasionally, they happen. On the other hand, I do have moments of technical brilliance.

We need to make friends with ourselves. We are stuck with our self all day, so let's be kinder, gentler, more amusing company. Let's take our own hand and say, 'There, there, sister. You're doing a good job. I'm proud of how you're handling all this craziness down here. Don't give up. Carry on, warrior.'

Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection: that, though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear.

My friends started having children after college, while I was pursuing this crazy acting career and living hand to mouth. Plus, all my boyfriends were artists struggling to make a living. Having kids didn't make any sense - why would I take on more of a financial burden when I couldn't even afford a dog?

Before I got into grad school, I used to work as a deck hand on these ferry boats in San Francisco, and they did day tours. It wasn't a bad job. I made decent money. But you were sitting down all day, tying up the boat, wiping it down. For some guys, that's a dream job, but for me it was kind of torture.

I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.

As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be. As a grown woman, I saw the first black president reach down a hand and touch the face of a child like I once was, lifting his eyes toward a better future.

I found Ricky Ponting the hardest to bowl to and it was a great pleasure to play against him as he was genuinely one of the best that's ever played and a really tough competitor as well. He hated you when you were on the field but he always shook your hand and was the epitome of 'play hard but play fair.'

The moment I escaped to China, I didn't have any money; I only had one address in my hand of some long-distance Chinese relatives. I didn't know China was that big. I thought I can find their home very easily, and I would come back one week later. But then I found out the address was a 10-hour drive away.

I wanted to be a senator from Illinois. I was obsessed with politics. My dad was friends with a lot of local politicians, so I would hang out with them on Election Day and hand out buttons. Somehow, even though they were opposite, I loved Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I thought they were the coolest guys!

We all know that as we form thoughts, they form deep channels in our minds and in our brains. Chronic pain is an example. If you burn yourself, you pull your hand away. But if you're still in pain in six months' or six years' time, it's because these circuits are producing pain that's no longer helping you.

For me, I always think about keeping my upper body relaxed, my hips level, and my right side down on the turn. If I work on nailing those three things at every practice, I hope that by the time I get into a race situation I can stay completely focused on the task at hand, and the rest will happen naturally.

Mubarak would meet with me when I was at Central Command. He would lean and put his hand on my knee, as if a father figure, and say, 'General, don't ever forget the Arab Street. Listen to the Arab Street.' I'd like to go to him now and say, 'Mr. President, what about that Arab Street, what's that all about?'

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life - that is, to be happy.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.

People think that I'm mean because I'm quiet, and I don't really go out places or because I don't really say too much. On the other hand, people think that I'm soft because I may not handle myself the way other people handle themselves. That's just not me. They don't know my background or none of that stuff.

You can't pretend to be witty because wit is dry, subtle, lacerating, cynical, elitist, and risque - all impossible to fake. Humor, on the other hand, is broad, soothing, positive, inclusive, and smutty - to make sure everybody gets it. Pretending to be humorous is easy, and a great many people are doing it.

Writers transform: they throw a hand grenade into the notion of reality that people carry around in their heads. That's very dangerous, very destructive, but not to do it means you are satisfied with the status quo - and that's a kind of danger as well, because a kind of violence is already being perpetuated.

I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It's about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I'm thrilled with what I've seen so far.

Sometimes, having a mom stay home is a big help. On the other hand, when a mother works outside the home, her husband generally does more child care and has higher parental knowledge about his childrens' friends, routines, and needs, cutting across the tendency for fathers to be second-string parents at home.

If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions.

If you can survive in the desert, you survive anywhere. I know more than anything life in desert. You can tell by looking at the dirt how long ago it rained, how hard it rained, how much water came through. You can by looking at a plant, a tree, from an animal's look. I can read the desert like I read my hand.

I cannot wait to come back to Glasgow. I know the place like the back of my hand. In fact, one of the jobs I had as a student was in Cineworld. And I was always at gigs in King Tut's, Nice 'n' Sleazy's and the Barras. I played Ultimate Frisbee down on Glasgow Green and pulled pints in O'Neill's on Queen Street.

It is easy to bare your body, but it is difficult to bare your soul. What works for me is that I am not a city-raised boy with city-raised sensibilities. I can play the vulnerable tough man, the guy with a gun in his hand, tears in his eyes, fire in his heart, innocence in him, and in his arms a woman he loves.

When you run a company, you want to hand it off in better shape than you found it. In the same way, just as we shouldn't leave our children or grandchildren with mountains of national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs, we shouldn't leave them with the economic and environmental costs of climate change.

So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.

I've had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let's you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, 'Well, put your hand over here.'

I think the lie we've told people in the marketplace is that a degree gets you a job. A degree doesn't get you a job. What gets you a job is the ability to carry yourself into that room and shake a hand and look someone in the eye and have people skills. These are the things that cause people to become successful.

You can count on one hand the white rappers that have made it. So I just wanted to show the point of view of an actor in Hollywood, because what could be more soft than that. Rapping about auditions and acting and stuff. I thought it was just uncharted territory to clown on, so that pushed through with Dirt Nasty.

If you just needed the skills to pass the bar, two years would be enough. But if you think of law as a learned profession, then a third year is an opportunity for, on the one hand, public service and practice experience, but on the other, also to take courses that round out the law that you didn't have time to do.

On one hand, we know that everything happens for a reason, and there are no mistakes or coincidences. On the other hand, we learn that we can never give up, knowing that with the right tools and energy, we can reverse any decree or karma. So, which is it? Let the Light decide, or never give up? The answer is: both.

I'd come to the country to do my Thoreau bit, so I needed an office that looked out onto the woods for inspiration. I converted one of the bedrooms into my workspace and through its windows watched the wildlife appear each morning with the sunrise. Many were the days I would sit in wonder, coffee in hand, for hours.

Once, when I was 5 years old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face.

I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you're able to be more patient. Patience is not just about waiting for something... it's about how you wait, or your attitude while waiting.

I'm a 'frotteur,' someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.

Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption.

I've been hitting up Hooters since 1983, and I can assure you nothin' says football season is here quite like watching the game on wall-to-wall flat screen TVs with the smell of Hooters world-famous chicken wings in the air and an ice-cold beer in your hand, served up with one-and-only Hooters hospitality, of course.

I write first drafts by hand. Never do I open an umbrella inside the house. I don't predict wins or losses. I used to stand on a certain piece of rug if my brothers and husband were watching football and their team got in trouble - but now the luck went out of that rug. If a circle is involved, I try to go clockwise.

I sometimes worry that by encouraging so many more people to try their hand at baking through 'The Great British Bake Off,' I'm going to find myself in court one day charged with accelerating the national epidemic of obesity! To which I will plead not guilty. A slice of Victoria sandwich is never going to harm anyone.

Just because you get to a certain number doesn't mean you have to roll up into a ball and wait for the grim reaper. We were put on this earth to do something! If you stop using your brain, at any age, it is going to stop working. It's like if you stop using your hand, it will atrophy. I think doing nothing is a curse.

When I heard The Beatles, that was my turning point. They were like my mentors. You know, the funny thing about that, when I heard 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' at first I said these guys are like a flash in the pan. But the second album, I had to take all that back. John Lennon - one of the greatest writers in the world.

I don't know about Mario Balotelli saying, 'Why always me?' - England should be saying as a nation, 'Why always us?' You can go back to 1970, when Gordon Banks got food poisoning and we lost to West Germany. Then there was 1986 and Maradona's hand. And last time, Frank Lampard not getting his goal against the Germans.

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