It's disheartening to write goals from year to year, looking back only to see you are in the same place. You can make so many promises that you get sick of yourself, but what is it that God can't do?
I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created ever...
We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing...
I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.
It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.
In other people's books, I tend to love the really daredevil-y characters. I love Finnick from 'The Hunger Games.' And I think, probably, my favorite character of all time is Sherlock Holmes.
Will smirked, clearly pleased at the effect he was having. "I've no idea. I lost consciousness about then. I was having a lovely dream about a young woman who had mislaid all her clothes...
Jem shook his head. "You bit de Quincey" he said. "You fool. He's a VAMPIRE" "I had no choice" said Will " He was choking me" "I know" Jem said. " But really Will, AGAIN?
I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.
I'm a bit of a Luddite, really: I don't use email much, as I started drowning in it. So I said 'screw this' and dumped my laptop, though I've begun to re-engage with it.
I most definitely would not buy the 'Daily Mail,' which pours a kind of livid torpor into the eyelids of the average Brit - I skimmed through a copy recently and couldn't believe the rubbish in it.
In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'
Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing.
What's happened - in our country, anyhow - is that the young people have shied away from the formality of the concert hall, that tie - and - tails philharmonic image.
My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.
There's not much in the way of written-down arrangements - just things that Gerry and I have worked out, from playing spontaneously together and hanging on to whatever seems to fall in right.
To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it.
I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now I've decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.
With historicals, the research is half the fun. Contemporaries are especially easy. People are right out there in front of you; you meet them every day. You can concentrate wholly on the story and characters.
If school principals have given up on the important things and are focusing on discipline, they are creating a certain, diluted reality. In an organization that functions properly, discipline should be a marginal issue.
The addictive pleasure of abandoning yourself to a book, of losing consciousness of your worries, your body, and your surroundings, to become a ghost haunting other worlds has influenced me in many ways.
