Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No one in my family wrote. And there was no real introduction. I suppose I somehow blundered into it when I was about six or seven years old. I was asked what present I would like, and, without knowing why, I responded that I would like a journal. It was a beautiful journal - so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it.
Oscar Charleston was the Willie Mays of his day. Nobody ever played center field better than Willie Mays. Suppose they had never given Willie a chance, and we said that, would anybody believe there was a kid in Alabama who was that good? Or there was a black guy in Atlanta who might break Babe Ruth's home run record? No.
Being nice to everybody, saying hello to everyone in the room, signing every autograph; it was instilled in me at a very young age that this was what I was suppose to do. But I don't think it helps at all. I see more people who are rude or arrogant being rewarded - but, this way, I can put my head on the pillow at night.
There is no reason to suppose that taste is in any way a lower sense than the other four; a fine palate is as much a gift as an eye that discerns beauty or an ear that appreciates and enjoys subtle harmonies of sound, and we are quite right to value the pleasures that all our senses give us and educate their perceptions.
As the wonderful agony begins for 1964-65, I sometimes wonder why I do it. I've got an insurance business going on the side, and it is starting to grow nicely. Selling insurance fulfills me, in a way, like basketball. But basketball keeps calling me back. I suppose I'll play until I can't keep up with the kids any longer.
I suppose Virgin is an unusual brand in that I suspect we're the only 'way of life' brand in the world. We're one of maybe the top 30 best known brands in the world, yet if you look at the other 29, they all specialize in one area. Whether it's Google, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, etc., they all generally specialize in one area.
I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.
There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers.
The music itself is very challenging, so I've never really felt the lack of stimulation. I love to be creating; I love to be making things and solving problems, I suppose, and when I'm not, then I'm not an incredibly good person to be around. If I'm not busy, then I think I would be disaster. That's just the way things are.
I haven't read the 'Twilight' books, though I suppose, in general, I thought it might be fun to deflate all of the notions of vampire sexiness, secret societies, the idea that anyone could learn to divide the population of the world between fellow vampires and perishable food sources and expect to retain their humanity, etc.
People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.
It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.
If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that's the old definition of a star, someone who's always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don't want to think of the job like that.
It's very nice to be asked to anybody's wedding. Particularly if it's the Prince of Wales. I learned a lot from it, which was to end early and get away. I suppose one would have to look back historically and see who other royals had at their weddings. Were there people at Queen Elizabeth's wedding who were common like myself?
I think I've grown up in a mixed environment, and maybe a lot of the time I haven't really belonged anywhere in the way I've dreamt of belonging to, you know, living on the street and playing to all the kids on the street, growing up together. I suppose 'Raw Like Sushi' was a place where all of those things could come together.
'Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons' is a kind of novel in verse about the arc of an urban lesbian love affair - and I suppose there is a certain amount of voyeurism in the consumption of fiction! The 'Sancerre' poems here are more contemplative and about the relationship of the individual to local and wider histories.
I suppose with any character that you play you always bring your personal experience to it. You always bring people that you know or that you've met and sort of - this is what I do, I mean, I don't know what anyone else does - but people that you know or that you've met that have affected you in certain ways, you bring into it.
I suppose 'My Hollywood' is only as politically meaningful as it is deeply inside the least powerful of its characters. I wanted it to reveal scenes of subtle exploitation, odd instances of accidental power and challenges to decency specific to its time, but also impulses of generosity that transcend our particular era's messes.
When somebody's calling you 'Mommy,' it's a wonderful thing. But also to have that responsibility and to know that you and your partner have this little thing that's totally relying on you - and it made me, I suppose, less selfish. Not that I was mega-selfish to start with, but it's lovely having that responsibility. It's scary.
It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it.
I'm not particularly interested in working with movie stars. It depends on where you come from, I suppose. Why are you making films? The reason I want make films is because they convey ideas. I think some directors make films because they want to hang out with movie stars and be part of Hollywood. They want to be a star themselves.
I had written two or three books before my husband noticed that in every one of them a family member was missing. He suggested that it was because my father's death, when I was five, utterly changed my world. I can only suppose he is right and that this is the reason I am drawn to a narrative where someone's life is changed by loss.
I've never fancied that footballer lifestyle. I suppose I could live that kind of flash life. People stereotype child actors and kind of expect you to go off the rails a bit, be a bit crazy, but that's not really happened yet. I've got a big family so that helps, and they live really close to the studios so it's just so much easier.
I wanted to wear the most impenetrable suit of armour ever known to mankind. 'Hello, Mr. Rotten...' You can't say anything about me. You can't put me down in any way shape or form - I'm rotten to the core... you know, what's left for you? Pleasantries? I suppose the worst insult you could sling my way is 'Oh, he's really nice, him.'
It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books.
Americans' distrust of the conspicuously intellectual - a habit we learned, I suppose, on the frontier, but which remains a feature of the national character - has the virtue of puncturing the pretentious and exposing the fake, but it may also have impaired American listeners' patience for music that is especially complex or austere.
Suppose that 'Unsolved Mysteries' called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people - like the lost identical twin, only younger than you.
I was a member of the Nationalist Party for several years. I don't remember how long. Those were very dreary days, because the Nationalist Party... it's hard to describe what it was. I suppose it held on to some kind of little faith, you know? It wasn't even sure what the faith was, and it was a very despised enterprise by everybody.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency among political elites to distrust the opinions of ordinary people. They are perceived to base their views on dark instincts and unjustified fears, rather than on rational choices. European voters, however, are highly educated, and it is ridiculous to suppose they can be easily fooled or manipulated.
I suppose one of the challenges of writing the word-side of music these days is trying to decipher and communicate how this planet is very overwhelming at this point. The difficulties we face are overwhelming. It's very difficult to give yourself the time to breathe and appreciate the joy and beauty that might be just right around us.
I suppose I don't have to work, but I do love working. I class myself as a working-class girl, and I've never stopped working. When I'm offered shows here, there and the other, I do an awful lot because I feel other people would love to be offered what I'm offered; who am I to say no? I'm definitely working class, and I always will be.
I suppose a good director is like a teacher. I think that someone like David Cronenberg was very much like a teacher, because there's an openness, but a certain set of rules of behavior, and a certain conduct expected. But there's an atmosphere that's relaxed and conducive to exploration, and that is created by someone like Cronenberg.
When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.
Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical 'experience machine' that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings.
I suppose the book I really remember loving as a child was one called 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, about a gang of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Sixties Oklahoma. I grew up in the Eighties in Nottinghamshire, but this tale of troubled, but essentially good, kids - or 'greasers' - was something I completely connected with.
I am a team player - and that is what you need to be an effective point guard. You gotta see the court, you gotta set up the play, and you gotta let others execute for the most part. I don't throw elbows for the sake of throwing elbows, but if somebody throws one at me and it's necessary to respond in kind, I suppose I can if I have to.
It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don't suppose anybody really understands yet.
When I was a bad writer, I would consciously imitate other NPR writers who I thought were wonderful. I suppose that everyone's artistic practice is different. But I collaborate and sometimes don't agree at all with my collaborators' opinions. It forces you to understand why you don't agree with something: what's the fight you're picking.
If you were asked to go on 'Mastermind,' what would your specialist subject be? I wouldn't have a clue what I could answer questions on. Birmingham City Football Club would be a start, I suppose, but with a hundred odd years of history, thousands of matches, players and incidents to recall, even access to Google would leave me struggling.
I guess if you have had a good education as opposed to someone who hasn't been to school, you start off on this journey having studied Shakespeare for years and years or studied classics. I suppose why people see this big divide - the boarding school boys getting all the roles - is because they feel like some people have had a head start.
At the heart of every really good Christmas movie is the threat, I suppose, to Christmas. Something is wrong with Christmas, in all of these movies. In 'The Polar Express,' there's a kid that doesn't really believe, and that's the threat to Christmas. In 'Santa Claus: The Movie,' jealousy and greed are threatening to overrun his Christmas.
I very, very, very rarely lose my temper. I do get cross sometimes when encountering something that I feel is improper, that I feel is lacking in justice and equity, and this all sounds very pompous and over the top - but these are the things that really upset me: intolerance, prejudice etc. I suppose in more mundane matters, I'm impatient.
Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature's forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.
When you realize that you have a little germ of an idea that has - I suppose I can only say, has to me - a little taste of magic to it. You have this idea that there are millions, literally, of people listening to it at the same time as you and that little strange telepathy of a feeling that you're sharing something live with all those people.
I would always stand up for women, but I don't want women's rights and all that sort of thing. I love to have men around, and I suppose if you're a true feminist, you get on and do it yourself. I love it when someone says, 'I'll get your coat' or, 'I'll look after you', or offers you a seat on the bus. I'm thrilled to bits. I'm not a feminist.
Suppose a bad guy guesses the password for your throwaway Yahoo address. Now he goes to major banking and commerce sites and looks for an account registered to that email address. When he finds one, he clicks the 'forgot my password' button and a new one is sent - to your compromised email account. Now he's in a position to do you serious harm.
I suppose I've always done my share of crying, especially when there's no other way to contain my feelings. I know that men ain't supposed to cry, but I think that's wrong. Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human. Oh yes, I cry.
When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.
I am afraid of aeroplanes. I've been able to avoid flying for some time, but I suppose, if I had to, I would. Perhaps it's a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. At one time, I had a pilot's licence and 160 hours of solo time on single-engine light aircraft. Unfortunately, all that seemed to do was make me mistrust large aeroplanes.
I could have easily said that I don't believe in anything when I came out of the upbringing that I had, but I do still believe that there is something there, and I have a difficult time figuring it out. I suppose I don't want to be thought of as stupid or unintelligent because I believe that there's something out there bigger than us in the world.