It's become something of a ritual - every year, Google publishes its year-end summary of what the world wants, and every year I complain about how shallow it is, given what Google really knows about what the world is up to.
Boxes and rectangles on the side or top of a website simply do not deliver against brand advertising goals. Like it or not, boxes and rectangles have for the most part become the province of direct response advertising, or brand advertising that pays...
In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas's dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled and dusky. It may be around an elbow, a heel, an armpit, a calf muscle, the nape of ...
My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in s...
I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.
Hey a rant. Haven't done one of those in a while. S'good to stretch out the Longevitus Ranticus section of the brain once in a while, otherwise you just become passive and might even- god forbid- lose the ability to stretch it in the first place.
China in particular is an absolutely fascinating place to be. Culturally and politically and economically it's becoming more and more relevant. If you look at how China is perceived in different parts of the world, you can recognize it's very dynamic...
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.
A lot of times when you have very short-term goals with a high payoff, nasty things can happen. In particular, a lot of people will take the low road there. They'll become myopic. They'll crowd out the longer-term interests of the organization or eve...
If you don't want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of a continued part of the problem. And then, above all, the resources.
There are surely times when a conservative and a liberal would agree. We would agree on how moral it is to discriminate on the basis of race. There's absolutely no light between those two positions. It becomes a little more complex when you talk abou...
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.
When you get something like MTV, it's like regular television. You get it, and at first it's novel and brand new and then you watch every channel, every show. And then you become a little more selective and more selective, until ultimately... you win...
If we could stop thinking of 'meaning' and 'purpose' as artifacts of some divine creative act and see them instead as the yield of our own creative future, they become goals, intentions and processes very much in reach rather than the shadows of chil...
Someone who copies a Van Gogh does not therefore become Van Gogh, and the same would go for Mozart or anyone else who contributed something that was original. Certainly in the way that I described visualizing numbers in abstract, meaningful shapes.
Zombies, vampires, Frankenstein's monster, robots, Wolfman - all of this stuff was really popular in the '50s. Robots are the only one of those make-believe monsters that have become real. They are really in our lives in a meaningful way. That's pret...
I know what it's like to have a broken heart. I know what it's like to feel pain: When my songs don't become hits, it breaks my heart. There are a million ways to break a heart. I can relate.
I consider fantasy the heir of mythology, addressing a real human need to seek out answers to life’s many mysteries. It is a genre that can tell an entertaining and enthralling story on the surface, and yet deliver a potent message underneath, wher...
…if you have someone who wants to heal, sometime they will respond to the unconventional. Their minds are more open to healing, so their bodies become more willing too. I believe that medication, while a wonderful thing, has its limits. That there ...
Often times we allow ourselves to become impatient, by viewing God’s promises based on our human knowledge. Our thoughts and ways are irrelevant in his judgment to grant any of our requests. We need to have patience and trust in God for answers to ...