Those old adages - you attract more with honey; do unto others - are true. You can get attention by being acerbic or mean or making a bizarre comment. But by being nice, being empathetic, building relationships and listening, people begin to recogniz...
I think the goal with any writing, but especially narrative nonfiction, is to put the blockade of putting your thoughts in this unnatural medium of print and then trying to reach through that and actually convey what's going on, what you think, and m...
People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were tr...
I have always aspired towards other people's looks. When I was young, I loved teddy boys; I thought they looked wonderful. Then I was a cowboy in Arizona, really for the clothes! I had a ranch for five years; I had chaps made of bearskin.
[Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner belonged to] that small army of brave people who made it their duty, without thought of themselves or hope or expectation of reward, to strive for unpopular causes. [Chapman Cohen on the death of noted freethinker and peace ...
There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would...
I have always despised people who thought they were better than others, and I made a promise to myself that I'd never turn into that kind of person. My family also helps to keep me grounded. Whenever I get a 'diva moment,' as they like to call it, th...
I still wanted to see the family come back to life. And when that didn't transpire from the music, it kinda made me feel like I was bein' taken advantage of. I thought, when people heard '8 Diagrams,' they'd be like, 'Oh, Wu-Tang is a wrap now - they...
I grew up in a small town where I went to the movies a lot and fell in love with all these people. I also fell in love with the movie business. So all I saw were actors on the screen so I thought, well, that's what I have to be if I want to be a part...
The first chance I had to go to Japan, which was in the early nineties, I went to a Noh play. I thought, 'This is very, very slow.' I noticed lots of people falling asleep. I didn't really know what was going on; I was getting a little sleepy myself....
I loved it. I just thought I wanted to stay in college forever. I came to New York all by myself; I didn't have any friends there. But it was fine. I felt comfortable. I started thinking, 'Maybe graduate school?' I was really cool with people who wer...
I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't ha...
Every time I sit for a song, I feel I am finished. It's like a beggar sitting waiting for God to fill your bowl with the right thought. In every song, I ask help from Him. Everybody around is so good, so to create music that will connect with so many...
Our thoughts about an event can have a dramatic effect on how we go through the event itself. When our expectations are low, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised. When they're not, we're vulnerable to painful disappointment. Because of this, many peo...
There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. T...
I've always liked wrinkles. When I was a young girl, I used to make lines on my face with my nails because I loved Jeanne Moreau. I always wanted to be older; I always added years to my life. For the longest time, if people thought I was older, I wou...
I came to Southbury because I wanted to live a more simple life. When I was a child, I saw lots of movies about happy people living in Connecticut. And ever since then, that was where I wanted to live. I thought it would be like the movies. And it re...
I can remember somebody once saying to me that they thought my life must be less real than these other people that they were writing about, which I found a very peculiar thing 'cos all our lives are equally real, and it's just a matter of depicting t...
I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a differen...
I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died, and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion, but in fact, what made her the person she was w...
Happiness is a way of life; not a future destination that you arrive at. A lot of people are often carried away by the thoughts of working hard and having a lot of money in the future. However, this illusion tends to clear off when one finally achiev...
