If you have a good ear for dialogue, you just can't help thinking about the way people talk. You're drawn to it. And the obsessive interest in it forces you to develop it. You almost can't help yourself.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.
Members of the Senate and House, if they want to send troops into war, should be forced to send a family member. That would really make everyone stop and go, 'Ohhh-kaaay.'
Fear is a far more dominant force in human behaviour than euphoria - I would never have expected that or given it a moment's thought before, but it shows up in the data in so many ways.
Logically, harmony must come from the heart... Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.
I haven't always been thrilled with my work. But the fear of not proving the people wrong who think you can't emerge from a franchise and do well, that's a very strong driving force.
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
And so, today, if the state can no longer appeal to the old moral principles that belong to the Christian tradition, it will be forced to create a new official faith and new moral principles which will be binding on its citizens.
'Faith' and 'trust' are words that put the power in the hands of an outside force that we are meant to rely on - whether it is God or a person or the universe. Certainty puts the power back in our hands.
Within the realm of fiction, it is always tempting to set one's stories in a dystopian future, where all our misgivings about state power can be shown in full force.
The future battle on the ground will be preceded by battle in the air. This will determine which of the contestants has to suffer operational and tactical disadvantages and be forced throughout the battle into adoption compromise solutions.
Think about it: Reducing crime and poverty and ensuring that we have an educated, stable work force has a direct effect on you and me and the future of our country.
My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty.
Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.
To truly repent of a big thing, you have to go into it with your heart open and force yourself to deal with it at that level and to apologize to God.
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom nor forced him wander, but confine him home.
Writing a book about yourself is like therapy, and you go 'Oh My God, that's the reason that happened.' Writing about it, you're forced to really examine things.
In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.
When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early '90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn't want to, because they had no pilots.
The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.
