Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.
I went along and basically learned a few of the songs they were doing at the time, which were quite a few of the songs we ended up doing on our first album.
The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.
By the time you're 18, 19, you know yourself, and you shouldn't go against your gut feeling, which is a temptation in the first year of university.
There does seem to be in the U.S. now an ideology and an entrenchment that has stopped people doing what they are hired to do, which is govern rather than run for office the whole time.
I didn't spend much time in America, which probably was a mistake. To someone else, having a number one in America would be enough to get them touring.
There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
We're seeing the fulfillment of the Book of Judges here in our own time - every man doing that which is right in his own eyes.
The only time I ever really consider retiring is when I get fed up with the press. Which is often.
When we did Top of the Pops for the third time, we decided to do it as a television program here called Come Dancing, which is not as rude as it sounds.
What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.
I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time.
Obviously, I'm not looking in the core of the reactor, but I am looking at what, at that time, was considered the source of the trouble, which was the water and where it was.
The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.
There is no scientific reason to think that we, even with space travel, are going to survive as a species for ever, certainly not by biting off the hand that feeds us, which is exactly what we are doing.
Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.
After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.
