Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.
My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'
A lot of people don't know this, but I started out as a blues-based player, and then, when I realized after playing 18 hours a day that there's more than five notes per scale, that's when my stuff became what it was. I started listening to violinists and flautists, and that's how my style evolved.
In the present time you don't really establish what you're going through, but after time it's declared something. Right now there could be some writers doing something expressing their thoughts in a whole different style that we're not aware of. This could be the 'in-between the notes generation.'
If I'm playing a real-life person, I would take notes, I think that's important. For instance, when I played Rosemary Clooney, I was lucky enough to meet her; thankfully, she was still with us. And I talked with her and read her book, so when it's a real person, I want to find out everything I can.
A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it. And then, there are notes and you change it, in the conventional studio system.
What we look for when we need to find someone who can fit in with our music, the vocals and the harmonies and the way they blend are very important to us because if you listen to Beach Boys music, the harmonies, not only are the notes being sung, but there's a blend to it. The voices have to blend.
I never would have guessed that I would get a job for the way I sound. I would get notes about how I should lose my accent, and part of me thinks, 'How dare you! This is who I am! Millions of people want to sound like me!' But it's sensitive, and I have tried to change it, with little to no success.
I always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.
People think I'm not polite. But, what I have to say to people seems so unnecessary. I can't be forced. I'd rather just be what I feel. Even when I sing I try to imagine I'm all alone, there's nobody out there listening. I play with the notes, with the feeling. Each time the song is different for me.
A scale is just the notes that are in a chord played one at a time instead of together. That's what has allowed me to go through the possible notes that work with a chord and make choices about which ones I like best. I go through by ear; you can do it by theory too, but the best way is to learn by ear.
Most hiring managers interview a lot of people. So many that they generally have to go back to their notes to remember candidates - the exception being candidates with a strong hook. Sometimes these hooks are how people dress or their personality, but the best hook is a strong story that's work-related.
People don't go to the record store anymore. It's crazy. The culture used to be so much stronger. People would go and support you, and go pick up the album. Not just for the music, but for the liner notes, for the artwork, just for the whole thing and to have it, and be able to say, 'I have this album.'
The guitar is a funny instrument because you have bendable strings and distortion - there's a potential for noise. It is more exposing. Actually controlling the instrument, using proper vibrato, bending notes in tune, not fretting too hard, controlling the noise is a skill in itself that takes many years.
They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copies; books that are collectible will continue to be collected; people with lots of bookshelves will keep stocking them; and anyone who likes to make notes in books will keep buying books with margins to fill.
I was shocked when I heard that Farghadani had been sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison on spurious charges, as Amnesty International notes, of 'spreading propaganda against the system,' 'insulting members of the parliament through paintings' and 'insulting the Supreme Leader' with her cartoon.
I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.
One of the greatest technicians of all time was a man named W. D. Gann (1878-1955). He had tremendous success predicting market moves much in advance. Legend has it that he occasionally sent notes to 'The Wall Street Journal', which accurately predicted tops and bottoms in grain markets months ahead of time.
Now I can broadcast to an audience of several million people on the 'Today' programme. I can talk about the day's news. But on radio, believe it or not, we have notes and scripts. And while we might ad lib the odd wryly amusing asides, they come at the frequency of a suburban bus. About one every 90 minutes.
Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
I don't make any notes, but I do know where to find things. Suppose I need to know where Wexford first talked about his love of the countryside or where he quotes Larkin or what was the beginning of his hatred of racism or where he first encountered domestic violence; I would be able to find it straight away.
I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.
My third day playing saxophone, I was in front of a congregation. I still didn't know the names of all the notes. I was playing by ear, following along, but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn't fail. It was all, 'Yeah baby, you sound real good' no matter what you play. It was a great way to learn.
The evasion of justice within academia is all the more infuriating because the course of sexual harassment is so predictable. Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes.
Recording a Hindi song takes me around 40 minutes whereas a Kannada song takes me about two hours. The music isn't a problem, since the notes used are universal. The language is the problem. I try my best to get it right, as I'm sensitive about respecting every language, since all of them are sacred in my heart.
Colour, Figure, Motion, Extension and the like, considered only so many Sensations in the Mind, are perfectly known, there being nothing in them which is not perceived. But if they are looked on as notes or Images, referred to Things or Archetypes existing without the Mind, then are we involved all in Scepticism.
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.
I had a hole in my voice. I still do. We call it a hole, but it's an area in the voice where it's air. And my classical teachers were just so frustrated with me because I would have these deep, low notes that were really strong, and the higher register was strong, but right in the middle area, it was really hard.
Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else.
When Jennifer Roberson and Kate Elliott and I were noodling up 'The Golden Key,' we had pages upon pages upon pages of notes about everything to do with our little universe. Much of this material was used; the rest was there if we needed it. But it all had to be consistent within itself and adhere to its own logic.
I used to take formal notes in lines of blue, and underline the key words in red, and I realised I needed only the key words and the idea. Then to bring in connections, I drew arrows and put in images and codes. It was a picture outside my head of what was inside my head - 'mind map' is the language my brain spoke.
To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.
I type my sermon notes into my BlackBerry, then I upload my sermon notes to my blog, my Facebook page and some of the information to my Twitter account. That's 100,000 people I'm sharing the Gospel with by the virtue of typing it into my BlackBerry as opposed to writing it down. That is being efficient with my time.
I was a good college kid, all-American and baseball-playing, living in the dorms with a million barbarians. I did not expect to be claimed by Fitzgerald hook, line, and sinker. 'This Side of Paradise' - that sweet, sophomoric pastiche of notes, scenes, poetry, and plays - I felt like he'd written the book just for me.
When a new record came out, the world would stop that day, and we would sit in somebody's house - whoever had the best stereo system - and sit in the middle of the two speakers and listen and discuss and listen again and go over the album notes and get out the guitar and start playing it and discuss and play some more.
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
Do not let yourself get in your own way. Don't judge yourself and knock yourself down. There is enough of that out there already. Remember: you are an artist, and you bring something special to this craft. Take in notes and criticism, but don't let them define you. Don't try to become a watered down version of yourself.
I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a comic is to have everything in your head, not to have to refer to notes.
The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's playing a million notes and it's about playing fast. That's not what we do.
People buy pads all the time, because they want to write stuff down. We're never going to get away from paper, ever. People like writing; that's why more people are writing more real thank-you notes now - not just to stand out, but because there's something about pen to paper, about holding something cool in your hands.
TV is the place for writers to live. This is where you have creative control and you're constantly writing. 'Twilight' had almost a TV schedule to it. I was constantly working on these projects. There was not a whole lot of lull but I've gone onto other feature projects that's like, 'Okay, I'll get back to you on notes.'
My breakthrough was when I began to write during my commute, at first taking notes on my Palm Pilot, and then moving on to writing full prose on the tiny QWERTY keyboard of my iPaq smartphone. I got so fast that I was averaging 400 words during the 35 minutes or so I spent on the subway each way, or 800 words round trip.
I love television, and my love for it has made me curious about writing it. It feels like television's moving toward something more novelistic, and that's what I started wanting to do. But I can't say that I'm dying to get notes from a studio. The artistic control that you get as a playwright is worth its weight in gold.
'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.
Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.
I'm a guy where my perfect pitch has been altered by the fact that I usually tune up to what's going on. When I was a kid, it was horrible! If two notes were playing right next to each other, and they were dissonant, it would drive me nuts. If it was something that sounded like it was in between notes, it'd make me cringe.
I chew a special brand of gum that you can't get in America. It's British, and it's called Airwaves. It's a menthol eucalyptus gum that is a very soothing thing for me when I'm singing because I'm swallowing, and it also keeps my sinuses and general upper breathing clear. I've got to be able to hit these clear, clean notes.
I definitely learned to communicate with other musicians better. I used to feel so intimidated by guys who can read notes, like, 'Oh my God, they're gonna think I'm not even gonna be able to sit at the table.' But I've come to see that a lot of these musicians don't know how to read music either, and that made me feel good.