As the most powerful people in history, we have climbed to the top of the world food chain, so to speak. Facing not one single enemy or predator who poses to us any danger of consequence, we've found the only prey left: ourselves.
In the modern world, we are primarily confronted with the extraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they have not tried the old. Men have not gotten tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired o...
When you challenge other people's ideas of who or how you should be, they may try to diminish and disgrace you. It can happen in small ways in hidden places, or in big ways on a world stage. You can spend a lifetime resenting the tests, angry about t...
The past is a stronger influence in the South. But I think everywhere you have this sense that the world changes faster than you can accommodate yourself to. Looking back and seeing how you got where you are is a useful way to combat disorientation.
My first book, 'In Praise of Slowness,' examines how the world got stuck in fast-forward and chronicles a global trend towards putting on the brakes. That trend is called the Slow movement. 'Slow' in this context does not mean doing everything at a s...
I would direct TV. That's a little different. It's more of a contained world as a director. When you're doing a film you get on the rollercoaster, you put the safety bar down and then you're gone. And it's hard. It's hard, too, as a parent, I think, ...
[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to ‘interact with his peer group‘, might not be all that crazy, and might ...
I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal e...
I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.
When someone talks about Western films, you probably think of those old black and white cowboy films your granddad likes. But the Western is a wonderful genre because it is usually a story of a lone hero fighting against corruption in a dangerous wor...
I'll read pretty much anywhere and anytime, but for a while now, I've really enjoyed reading on flights, especially the longer hauls, when I'm unplugged from everything and can completely immerse myself in the world of a book and submit happily to it...
I want to stand on the foundation of ethics and morals when the world around me would assault that foundation with all of its collective might, and in the standing I want to stand on the truth that that foundation will stand long after everything tha...
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused -- hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. That is a lie. All t...
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter ...
I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to ...
Geeks run the world. Condoleezza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in th...
I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien', 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan fo...
Your darkness is a symphony Played in explosions of silence to a crowd that has fallen in love with noise If they refuse to applaud you It isn't because your music isn't beautiful It is because they have no idea how to love what they don't understand...
Any child may go through periods during which they become less outspoken with their parents or teachers. But girls, like boys, live in many different worlds - they have their friends and their classroom and their parents - and within these different ...
Mitt Romney's only bottom line is the one at the end of his own bank statement. The problem is that he confuses his own narrow, self-interest - and that of people like him - with the national interest. He thinks as long as we do right by the Mitt Rom...
I can imagine people in Third World countries looking at, you know, someone like Hillary Clinton raising $35 million for her presidential campaign that goes to really, you know, nonproductive means, and they see that, and they just - it's just really...
