To become better writers we must become the best thieves and liars in the business. We slink around the pages of everyone else’s work and shove it into our pockets. Then we run home and try to make it our own.
When it comes to relationships, it's nice to have something that is your own and not everyone else's. That's not part of my job. I never stood up on a podium and said, 'Vote for me - I'm perfect. I'll be this for you and never do anything wrong.'
Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and...
We want to stay on this tour bus together as long as we possibly can. I'm sure a lot of bands are like, 'I need my own space.' But we don't. I want to be with these guys forever.
One thing I've learned in life is that I can speak for myself, that I can fight my own battles. I don't like anyone telling me how I'm supposed to feel or think or what I'm supposed to say.
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.
A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not...
Sing before the spirits and dance with the earth deities And you will be able to compose your own tune. Then you and I, united, will clap hands joyously, Singing 'tum-tiddly-um tum-tiddly-um-tum.
If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand.
A leader without a clear vision and plans only abuses his power because visions, dreams and plans are the fulcrum along which the loads of success will spine by your own efforts. And where power is abused, there is manipulation instead of inspiration...
I won't compete with anybody. I love to compete with my own body. When God closes a door against me, I should not attempt to bang on it. And if God gives me a key to open a door, I should not misuse that key!
If you want a fried fish to fly and enter your mouth, you must keep waiting till the unending time ends. Dead fish doesn't fly. If you want to eat it, your own hands must carry it.
Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.
I don't own a radio. I listen to everything through apps or on my iPhone. And then I download the shows I like. Shows like 'Fresh Air', 'Radiolab', 'Snap Judgement', all those shows.
I always dreamed when I was a little girl interested in animals that I would go live in Africa. Then I found out that you can look in your backyard, and you can do your own safari.
I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book - that one book every writer carries within him - the image of his own soul.
I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
I'm a somewhat isolated person in my own way, or I move along a little trail, I go this place, I go that place. It's not like I'm varying my exposure.
There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
