I think the idea of fact-checking, I think the idea that you come up through a system where you know how to cover night cops, and then you go on, and you go on to various beats, including writing obituaries, and you get names right, you know how to s...
I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journa...
I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is a...
Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That wa...
In an age when mass pleasures like television are becoming more feeble and homogeneous, the very act of discrimination becomes a form of protest. At a time when mass marketing of food produces a product so disgusting that it has to be wrapped in dist...
When I went to Egypt right after 9/11 I was very upset. I used to live in Egypt. I had a lot of friends there. I spent two years teaching there. I had very fond feelings for that part of the world, and the fact that a culture I liked so much had atta...
I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current European civilization and do not ...
I feel lucky that I had my children late. Not that I would advise it in any shape or form. But I know friends who had children when they were young, struggled with feeling trapped. I can honestly say I've never once resented the fact that I couldn't ...
There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to ...
With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material - I mean, so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way, it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material. With 'Vikings,' there isn't t...
I know when I've been playing a lot of golf it takes me a while to get back into cricket again. It's not so much the different shape of the swings, more the fact that you are stationary when you hit a golf ball. In cricket you have to move forward or...
The Christian who is not diligently involved in a serious study of Scripture is simply inadequate as a disciple of Christ. To be an adequate Christian and competent in the things of God we must do more than attend “sharing sessions” and “bless ...
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he ...
And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad... Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think the only perspective is to really be there. Like Sam sa...
Being 36 years old changes you a lot, and so does eight years away from career, fame, needing attention, needing to be loved by strangers on some level. I was loving anonymity. I was loving the fact that I could meet a girl who didn't know who I was....
I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the real...
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us to change the mindset which has tended to create ad hoc solutions for the political madness and social farce. In fact, our age of tragedy which has been represented by the so-called “Marxists” in the Sinhal...
I think for me, happiness is crucial, but I think we think that happiness comes from amassing goods and getting things and being loved and being successful, when in fact my experience of happiness comes when you give everything away, when you serve p...
The truth is, truly passionate media creators don't get into the media business to make huge gains from spectacular unicorn exits. When it happens, we certainly all cheer (and perhaps secretly hope it happens to us). But the fact is, we make media be...
In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learn...
There are a lot of dream roles that I couldn't do, like James Bond and Indiana Jones; I'd never get a look in there, but actually, Doctor Who is probably the only one that I could because he's quite quirky, and the fact that he regenerates he can act...
