I was well motivated. What I wanted to do was work for myself. I had twenty two jobs before I started my business at the age of twenty three and I didn't want one more boss telling me what to do. So I was motivated simply because I didn't want a boss...
Sid Vicious began the age of participation in which everyone could be the artist. Sid proved that you don't have to play well to be the star. You can play badly, or not even at all. I endorsed that attitude. If you can't write songs, no problem - sim...
I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!
I have an internal protectiveness where it's like, if it comes to just me, as frightened as I am of losing someone I love or things going sour or simply being alone, there is a dark place in my brain where I'm like, It could happen and I'm okay, I'm ...
An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world w...
I was taught that to create anything you had to believe in failure, simply because you had to be prepared to go through an idea without any fear. Failure, you learned, as I did in art school, to be a wonderful thing. It allowed you to get up in the m...
Historically and culturally, New York City and our entire nation simply would not be the same without the infusion of Asian traditions. Whether it is food, art, language or any other facet of cultural life, Asian Americans have made our city and our ...
I didn’t do a 180-degree turn on my thinking. I simply swiveled my chair around so I could dismiss the idea from the other side.
Bishop Hostettler explained that baptism was not the means by which one is saved, but simply an outward sign of salvation. Just as an Amishman’s beard is an indication of his marriage and commitment to his wife, so baptism symbolizes our covenant w...
At its Greek root, "to believe" simply means "to give one's heart to." Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.
What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.
If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.
There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.
Sometimes life's lessons may not be easily labeled; and we may not understand simply because we are too close to the situation (emotionally). Bad things and tragedy strike all around us with no obvious reasons but somewhere in this "the phoenix will ...
Deep down I believe each of us is a well-spring of understanding and wisdom, but we simply never allow the space or time for this understanding to rise to the level of conscious thought.
One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when ...
A life of joy awaits the man who sits alone quietly in a room and determines what he himself believes rather than simply adopting the values of another.
I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkn...
I’d kill every politician with a spoon, if I thought they had coffee for brains. But they’re simply not that intelligent, and I wish the people would wake up to that fact.
I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?
