I mean, honestly, we have to be clear that the life for many Afghan women is not that much different than it was a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. The country has lived with so much violence and conflict that many people, men and women, just want i...
What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war a...
We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.
For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It's satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more po...
One thought follows on the other, they are not distinct objects with clear boundaries; rather, one thought anticipates the next and thereby contains it. The thought that comes afterward contains the memory or trace of the former. Thus, the movement o...
Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, as well as Abu Musab Zarqawi, have made it quite clear in their internal propaganda that they cannot win unless they can drive the Americans out. And they know that they can't do that there, so they've brough...
When I was in high school, I ran hurdles, but I was really short, so I'd barely clear them. I was pretty quick, but I had little legs, so I had to take 50 steps in between each hurdle.
Something good happened to my writing when stopped being afraid to do something simple, for the fear that people might think I couldn’t do something more complex. Don’t be confused by the word simple. Simple is not easy, it is clear voiced, and f...
We believe that unilateral sanctions violate international law, in fact. They violate free trade. They violate human growth and development, human development, and that when you actually sanction a bank of a country, the meaning of it is quite clear....
The host took care to produce one or another of these whenever the current subjects seemed about used up, so that the conversation gathered new life and at the same time steered clear of political arguments, which are hindersome to both ingestion and...
Katie shook her head in dismay. “I thought being poor was the worst thing that could happen to a girl.” “No, Katie,” the countess said in a clear voice. “The worst thing is to be in love with one man and have to marry another.” Katie O'Re...
Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.
I'm more lopsided than a one legged badger!" Graypaw stopped his careful stalking to wander comically across the clearing "I will have to settle for hunting stupid mice I shall just wander up to them, and sit on them until they surrender!
Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn’t stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a...
I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and r...
I didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it, you might take one thing from it. Until that was clear in my mind, I wasn't going to do one.
When you hear in the tape recordings Nixon's own voice saying, We have to stonewall, We have to lie to the Grand Jury, We have to pay burglars a million dollars, it's all too clear the horror of what went on.
Often, I grow irritated before the first tile has been placed on the Scrabble board. This generally occurs when one of my opponents has insisted upon bringing a dictionary to the table, making it clear that he will be consulting it throughout the gam...
The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions,...
I don't want to be a lobbyist. I want to provide strategic advice to companies. I said both of those things in the course of the interview, and I made clear this is a matter only for after I had become a private citizen and I was no longer a member o...
