If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.
Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.
They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.
Not surprisingly, most people feel most beautiful when they are involved in an act of service, or are doing something that makes them feel generous, connected, or seen by others.
I think people took Grenada for what it turned out to be, which was a very specific incident and from which one couldn't necessarily make a lot of generalizations.
Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.
'Juno' really changed things for me and I get a lot of screenplays come in now, but I like to self-generate and I like to kind of pursue my own ideas. And I think the more personal the better.
It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he's such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
Indeed, the very first resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations - adopted unanimously - called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
We have been tarnished by the views of generations, painted on with society's standards, but if we wipe away the dust, and polish the heart within, you will discover that the surface underneath is lustrous.
You watch the Supreme Court in action on these cases, and they are a conflicted court. However, when it comes to speech issues generally, the court has been protective.
Berkeley had a liberal element in the student body who tended to be quite active. I think that's in general a feature of intellectually active places.
We must ensure that today's seniors' benefits are rock solid and find a solution that fixes Social Security for the next generation that is just entering the workforce.
At least she's not guilty of integrity, and that's more than I can say of any Bell in four generations except my grandfather and myself.
New York is a city with virtually no habitable public space - only private spaces expensively maintained within the general disaster.
Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.
Growing up, all I did was write about the fact that I'm from where I'm from. I was a big champion of where I was from and Wisconsin in general, and the Midwest.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
We want everybody to get rich. The Republican Party is often called unloving, uncaring, not generous, or whatever - that's a bunch of baloney. We're the party that believes in free markets.
