It is neither cowardice nor betrayal to insist that the Enlightenment's main lesson is to be mindful of how much it has left its inheritors to figure out.
Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.
I have always been driven; I've always wanted to be published, and I wanted to make that happen, so I worked very hard. 'Perfectionist' would be a word to describe me.
We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by - those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble.
It's interesting that people bring different things to oppressive and difficult situations, when they're reduced to the barest terms of survival. That's what provides tension in a lot of films.
I've always said that lovingkindness and compassion are inevitably woven throughout meditation practice even if the words are never used or implied, no matter what technique or method we are using.
Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe.
I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.
People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.
It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing
It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?
Blacks who have not succumbed to the victim culture have been, are, and will be doing quite well - all on their own, without handouts, affirmative action, and other patronizing measures.
The word knight, which originally meant boy or servant, was particularly applied to a young man after he was admitted to the privilege of bearing arms.
We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean.
Is Wall Street the rightful master of our economic fate? Or should we choose a broader form of sovereignty?
First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.
Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
I have a problem with people saying feminine means anti-feminist, and I think it's counter-productive to immediately associate anything 'girly' with vanity or stupidity.
I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.
I notice that students, particularly for gay students, it's too easy to write about my last trick or something. It's not very interesting to the reader.
