Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don't. Emotional pain or numbness are symptoms of living the wrong life, not a long life.
When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the...
I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of t...
Venezuelans have a long history. So we are able to listen to each other, to talk to each other. From here were born the liberators of the region, and they said before and after that process we have a culture of political action. We are not in despair...
I have long been interested in landscape history, and when younger and more robust I used to do much tramping of the English landscape in search of ancient field systems, drove roads, indications of prehistoric settlement.
Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He's the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally...
Remember, when YouTube was founded in the U.S., America's Funniest Home Videos had been around for a long time. In China, the history of TV as well as user-generated video is very, very short. So, we've actually had to do a lot of things to motivate ...
One thing I'm hearing a lot is from teachers who have felt that there's something wrong with the extreme group learning, but felt like they couldn't say that out loud. And apparently the discussion is now opening up. I think change is going to be a l...
I shall always be consistent and never change my ways so long as I am in my senses; but for the sake of precedent the Senate should beware of binding itself to support the acts of any man, since he might through some mischance suffer a change.
If you ever go to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, if you stay there long enough, you'll see a homeless person standing in the middle of their nice, beautiful square, holding out a cup for change. And the Mormons don't ever ask him to leave.
I'd like to think life has improved since 1850, despite the long hours we all seem to spend slaving over hot computers, but the psychological journeys remain the same - the search for love, identity, a meaningful place in the world.
I got two older brothers and two younger sisters, and we grew up in the country, and we were a little feral. So as long as the car didn't end up in the rhubarb and you didn't get caught for doing whatever you were doing, you were fine.
I had some vague memory of visiting Canberra as a lad, when we came up with my father by car. But when I made the long train journey from Sydney to Canberra and arrived at the little stop, I did wonder slightly whether this really was the national ca...
I have very long legs and I hate driving anything unless it's a boat or an ATV in the jungle. I like to sit in the back of a car, where I can look out the window, answer my emails on my iPad, or hold hands with a pretty girl.
When you're in a rehearsal room, it's like getting into a car and going on a long journey with everyone's stuff in the back. If you keep stopping the car and going, 'Are you sure we want to go?' and think, 'This is really daunting,' you will get frig...
A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell i...
I was looking for the meaning of life when I was in college. And my deal with my dad was as long as I was taking a full course load, then he would pay. And the times that I wasn't taking a full course load, then I was off the dole and I was working.
My dad told me something long before I was in politics, and when your dad gives you advice every single day, eventually one or two of the things stick in your mind. And he said, don't believe what people say, believe what they do.
When two people break up, it's all about them; they can't see anyone else. And the people getting smashed to bits are the kids. Then you're getting torn - your mum wants you, your dad wants you. You just get shredded. It has a long-lasting effect as ...
My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.
Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final ...
