The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.
Japan's diplomatic efforts could have had a broader international perspective. Relations with the U.S. are, of course, the cornerstone of Japan's diplomacy, but the U.S. acts on its global strategy. For instance, Washington suddenly got closer to China in the early 1970s as part of its strategy against the Soviet Union.
I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.
Nothing's new since Genesis. And so everybody in their life thinks history began when they were born. Most people's historical perspective happened when they were born in the sense that nothing has ever been this bad. "We've never gone before this before," and of course we have. Things have been worse in many ways in the country.
It's amazing when you see something on T.V. for years and then you go and see it in person. It's perspective is all different.
The first thing that has to be broken down is your relationship to authority. Your insecurity could possibly be the wedge that opens up your perspective on what you think is possible for you to do.
Which is bigger? A baby eagle or a giant crow?
I think of this a lot in the terms of books. Of course there's a big to-do culturally about e-books versus print books, sales models. The paradigm has changed but my perspective on it is that there's not going to be another paradigm to alight on because everything will continue to evolve so quickly that our brains won't be able to keep up with it.
But the thing is, from the perspective of a novelist there is a brand of lying that feels more honest than the actual facts of an event. Lying as a way to move closer to the truth, or to illuminate ow something actually feels in a way the mere facts cannot.
A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
If the participants regret participating, then you won't have something that reveals some greater truth about human condition or allow some other perspective. You need people to want to be there so they can talk at length and want to continue talking to you.
All that happens in our lives which we find painful, physically or emotionally, is for a purpose. Unfortunately, from our very limited perspective it is often not possible to see the good in it. The divine plan is not available to our eyes.
From the law firm's perspective, billing by the hour has a certain appeal: it shifts risk from the firm to the client in case the work takes longer than expected. But from a client's perspective, it doesn't work so well. It gives lawyers an incentive to overstaff and to overresearch cases.
The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.
What we need to do from God's perspective is that we need to reach out and understand each other.
We insist that society should conform to our own subjective illusion of reality.
The thing you resist is the thing you need to hear the most.
Harry [Shearer] and I had an idea to do a movie about rock 'n' roll from the roadies' perspective, from backstage. Then Meat Loaf came out with a movie called Roadie and we thought, "Oh, we can't do that now." So we kind of discarded the idea.
I hadn't had that much time practicing behind the drum kit. I've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to and programming drum parts, but it's completely different. One of the beautiful things about using a sampler is since you are so detached from traditional technique, you're forced to have a macro perspective of the project. With an instrument, it's the opposite. With drums specifically, there's nothing that provides more instant gratification and nothing that's funner to play.
I've found joy, peace and perspective. Those are very good things to have.
I always try and find new things to think about and address. That really opens you up as a writer. I can write a lot of what I feel and it helps put it into clearer perspective.
One of the powerful functions of a library-any library-lies in its ability to take us away from worlds that are familiar and comfortable and into ones which we can neither predict nor control, to lead us down new roads whose contours and vistas provide us with new perspectives.
From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.
Try to maintain the perspective that, in time, everything disintegrates and returns to its initial form.
We live in a state-centric world faced with global-scale problems that cannot be met by the actions of single states, no matter how powerful, if assessed from the perspective of military capabilities.
