When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.
I am going to keep on singing. I have no intention of retiring. Actually, I always wonder whether people know my songs in the different countries I visit. I feel nervous over whether they will sing along with me or not.
When you get real stage fright, it comes like a sledgehammer out of the blue in the middle of something that you know you've done too many times before, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's something quite different from being nervous. It's al...
Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell storie...
I wouldn't overestimate the importance of my popularity in the country and abroad but at the end of the day it's not as important because I believe that my presence here could make some difference and it could encourage people.
The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels.
The most important thing Paris gave me was a perspective on Latin America. It taught me the differences between Latin America and Europe and among the Latin American countries themselves through the Latins I met there.
I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging o...
'Are 'Friends' Electric?' was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn't finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then star...
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at...
Very early on, you figure out that you put your self-esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that...
The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between ...
Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the United States, to Miami. It's like a doppelgaenger. It's the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite t...
A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.
I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.
I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case.
Within childhood behaviors, there are known behaviors; there's teasing and there's name-calling, and different kinds of things happen as kids start to socialize. And then there's serious bullying, and then there's actual aggression and behavioral pro...
What do we mean by 'crazy?' What do we mean by 'mad?' At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go ...
I don't focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, then I don't worry about it.
Sometimes you just have to have faith in your own ideas. If you don't someone else will. Why should it be them and not you? The only difference is who is willing to take a chance.” -Jennifer Ritchie Payette, co-author, "Modular Career Design
We see evidence that lakes and forests and wetlands can have different equilibria - so you have a savanna system that may be stable and thriving, but it can also tip over and become an arid steppe if pushed too far by warming, land degradation, and b...
