Older boys were allowed to beat younger ones at my 15th-century English boarding school, and every boy had to run a five-mile annual steeplechase through the sludge and rain of an October day, as horses do. We wrote poems in dead languages and recite...
There is a saying, 'Eyes are the windows to the soul.' It means, mostly, people can see through someone else by eye contact in seven seconds. I have a habit that if I meet someone I don't know, I'd like to look at her or his eyes on purpose. When my ...
Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you c...
I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are well served by a saying through our policies that it's OK to be immoral in any...
There were dozens of people who walked through the Holy Land claiming to be the Messiah, curing the sick, exorcising demons, challenging Rome, gathering followers. In a way, there's nothing unique about what Jesus did. In fact, many of these so-calle...
Why are they like that?' I asked Cico. We skirted Blue Lake and worked our way through the tall, golden grass to the creek. 'I don't know,' Cico answered, 'except that people, grown-ups and kids, seem to want to hurt each other - and it's worse when ...
I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scru...
I express through my music my philosophy, my feelings, my passion, my dreams, my fears, my hopes, my wishes and my expectations. Without music, I would be mute, like a fish without water, like a bird without wings like a human being without air.
Scientist’s intellect is their ship as they navigate through the treacherous waters of detail where, hopefully, their good sense and rationale leads them to truth. Religious leaders already have the truth and those tenants that are not well-defined...
If you couldn't sense heat, you'd not be alive. And if that heat never grew uncomfortable, you would never move. And if you were stagnant—unchallenged by unpredictable flares—you would never grow capable of shielding yourself from harsher flames....
Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold; Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was trea...
People can say whatever they want about you without knowing the facts. They can criticize you without even knowing you, and hate you when they don't even know you. All of a sudden, you're, like, the bin Laden of America. Osama bin Laden is the only o...
One of the changes I'm driving within Nokia is to adopt what we call 'the challenger mindset.' Let's understand that we have to fight, we have to fight our way through the difficulties, we have to listen to consumers, we have to both deliver what the...
Each great work has to pass through three stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood. Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands ag...
I remember the early 1980s, when I first got one of these fabulous film critic jobs. The downside was sitting through 'Splatteria III: The Dismembering of the Clampett Clan' or 'The Oklahoma Meatgrinder Massacre' or some such. The headaches unleashed...
Occasionally, I'll direct if there's something I feel strongly about. Having done it has whetted my appetite to do it again, but I don't feel an internal pressure to direct. It certainly will make me a better producer, because I'm more empathetic; I ...
Be original and don’t be afraid to stand out. Never downplay your capabilities. Everybody won’t believe in you and everybody won’t rejoice with you, and that’s quite alright. Self-motivation, self-love, and self-determination will guide you t...
I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13' written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yoursel...
When you go through some controversy and you see your face on the news in a negative way for 48 hours... you doubt yourself. And your friends make the difference. They become a safety net that come in and say, 'That's not the case.' And the relations...
The difference between wanting to write and having written is one year of hard, relentless labour. It's a bridge you have to build all by yourself, all alone, all through the night, while the world goes about its business without giving a damn. The o...
I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympath...
