Thinking Quotes - Page 581

...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.

Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

You may concentrate on appearances all through the rest of your house, but in the bedroom comfort should be supreme. I think that bedrooms should also be very intimate rooms-they should express your personal preferences in every way...Of all the rooms in the house your bedroom is yours.

Have you ever stopped to think what fun this business of living can be? If you haven't, and if you are one of those who insist upon believing that life is humdrum, grim and boring, then I'm afraid this department is not for you. For I don't believe any such thing. I know that we can all free ourselves and live our lives fully, zestfully and joyfully!

To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them!

A language that takes our emotions seriously and gives them real weight in our lives encourages us to think and be and act differently.

Incidentally, I don't think there is a non-adjectival 'globalisation'. What we have now is a particular form: dominated by finance and multinational corporations and by a rhetoric (though not a reality) of 'free trade' and market forces. So I'm not a localist. I'm an internationalist, but one who believes (a) that such a thing is really only possible through a prior grounding and (b) that the terms of our present globalisation have to be challenged politically.

I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.

I saw a report yesterday. There’s so much oil, all over the world, they don’t know where to dump it. And Saudi Arabia says, "Oh, there’s too much oil." They -- they came back yesterday. Did you see the report? They want to reduce oil production. Do you think they’re our friends? They’re not our friends.

Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. Which frankly I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, thanks, Jeff, but you know, I`m not going to pick you. It`s extremely unfair, and that`s a mild word, to the president.

I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.

I think the best music videos are the ones that have nothing to do with the song. Those are all my favorites.

Most people think I'm Danny Glover's son when they meet me. So when they ask, I say 'No, I'm Crispin Glover's son.' Then we stare at each other for a long time.

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs. "I don't know how to sell this," they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. "I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this." In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job.

My ignorance of science is such that if anyone mentioned copper nitrate I should think he was talking about policemen's overtime.

There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

But I think role models also start in the home with your parents.

Overall I think that the most important thing is to have true friends, and always to stay true to yourself and never try to be somebody that you're not.

I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time... The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

Year by year I learn more about myself, and I think that confidence and honesty and just really being true to yourself is probably the most beautiful thing that you can do for yourself and the people around you.

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

Still, my dream in life is to come home and think of absolutely nothing. After all, you can’t think all the time.

I wouldn't want to be ideological about it but I think of it as being the best way to approach this kind of playing. I don't think it works in other music, other kinds of playing.

I'm a tad paranoid. I think the person in front of me is following me the long way round.