Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.
There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
True baseball fans do not cheer for their teams to win; they cheer for them not to lose. Victory does not come with joy, it comes with relief. Losing causes only pain.
I’ve been here before, dreaming myself backwards, among grappling hooks of light. True to the seasons, I’ve lived every word spoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?
In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.
True expression is hard when performing opera. The problem is that opera relies on the dramatic context of the piece. It can be interpreted and represented, but there are guidelines; there is a vocabulary within the pieces that you must know objectiv...
The word 'theatrical' makes me cringe, because it suggests a performance is staged, put on, rehearsed. And while all this is true for an opera, I believe the act of singing and performing should always be honest, raw, guttural.
That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcera...
To make films like 'X-Men' work commercially - and also have some class - is one of the hardest things there is to do. I want to be seen to be able to cross lots of genres and still be 'fair dinkum,' as we say in Australia, which means genuine and tr...
I think it would be different to work with a guy like Kanye West or Jay-Z, those guys are so phenomenal, but just to work with a rapper, I don't think is really my thing. I really like songs, like true songs. Like indie songs.
The reason I wrote 'I'm Too Young for This!' is to spare young women the suffering of hormonal loss - and it is true suffering. You can't sleep, you gain weight for no reason, you bloat for no reason, your moods are altered, and your sex drive is dim...
I don't think it's too late for 'The War of the Worlds' to come true. I'm talking about it from the standpoint that which you need to have and own things - to breed, to think, to create - is going on everywhere, not just on this planet or in the spac...
Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.
The effect of male-identification means ‘internalizing the values of the colonizer and actively participating in carrying out the colonization of one’s self and one’s sex… Male identification is the act whereby women place men above women, in...
Most people think that once they lose the weight or make more money they will finally feel good about them themselves, but they are usually disappointed when they get there to find they don’t feel better. This happens because real self-worth can’...
Do you believe in the value of truth, my dear, or don’t you?” “Of course I believe in the truth,” said Rhoda, staring. “Yes, you say that, but perhaps you haven’t thought about it. The truth hurts sometimes – and destroys one’s illusi...
The connoisseur's hushed, museum-trained gaze is not well-designed for these purposes. That gaze values subtlety, complexity, ambiguity, and irony. Its most characteristic grace note is self-congratulation at being the kind of person who likes this r...
the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those...
You think it's all rather too "New Age" to be taken seriously, eh?' 'Not at all.' 'But it's an ancient discipline...' 'New Age disciplines invariably are,' Beede said, disparagingly, 'but in the modern world they lack context - we just pick them up a...
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless....
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for you...
