Unlike Kim Cardassian or Donald Trump, Montaigne regarded the inward glance as an adventure in self-effacement not self infatuation. He was a charming and perceptive critic of his own foibles, especially alert to his weakness for inconsistency.
Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them... But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard.
Each culture has its own form of staged combat, evolved from its particular method of street fighting and cleaned up for presentation as a spectacle, e.g. savate, Cornish wrestling, karate, kung-fu.
All of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I own proof that I am a substantial being with a substantial history in the world.
When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.
My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' All of their friends 'gave teas,' each involving butter cookies extruded from a metal press and pastel bonbons ordered from See's.
In ancient African cultures, a young man was not considered a full member of the tribe, an elder, a man. He couldn't marry and he couldn't own land until he had killed a lion. It was symbolic.
Our notions of self-determination are, on the whole, something of a myth. We are governed almost exclusively by our own peculiar habits, which makes those who rail against them that much more remarkable.
The first episodes I actually read for 'Downton,' Sybil was really intimidated and hadn't come into her own. So it's only in Series Two that she's become so headstrong. In general, I find it exciting to play strong, female roles because they're shock...
So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.
I'm honestly perplexed about the distinction represented by the cervical wall. On one side, people should be prosecuted if they do anything to harm the fetus, but once on the outside, sorry kid, whatever happens happens. You're on your own.
... every hypothesis is a construction, and because of this it is an authentic theory. In so far as they merit that exigent name, ideas are never a mere reception of presumed realities, but they are constructions of possibilities; therefore they are ...
Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril.
You try to get the feel of any role, but it's much more difficult in the case of Christ because everyone has their own personal image of Him. It's a role you take on, knowing that no matter how you play it, you are going to disappoint many.
I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.
With an open trade in corn and a fixed duty we should have every man in the country fully fed and happy, instead of our present situation in which so much distress exists - distress of our own producing.
When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.
It's not our mission to change or direct another person's path. There is no wrong way or right way. We each have our own life journey and our mission is to just become a LIGHT that enlightens other people's pathways.
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.
The stories we tell about each other matter very much. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives matter. And most of all, I think the way that we participate in each other's stories is of deep importance.
