It's my job to look at other people's humanity and it's my job to, 247, look at my life and listen to everything everyone says, watching their faces, the little idiosyncratic aspects of human beings - it's like a sponge, I take it in.
Obviously I wanted to be a bus driver - and I still do. If only I could get a part time job.
This idea that you can't be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don't stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It's possible to do this job with honor and dignity.
The people of South and Central Texas and the Coastal Bend need jobs, they need health care, they need water infrastructure improvements, they need a quality education, and they need the resources to keep our borders safe and secure.
Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.
It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.
I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or ministers or sociologists. A writer's job, is to, by way of fiction, somehow describe the way we live. And to me, this seems an important task, very worth doing, and I think also, to the reading public, it seems, even though they might not articulate it, it seems to them something worth doing also.
I think one of things that Steve Jobs, in his own funny way, encouraged us to remember with those "Think different" posters of Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King was, "How do you make the world a better place?"
The first thing you do is don't let the jobs leave. The companies are leaving.
The press has not done a fair job of exposing his [Bernie Sanders] policy. He has not had the television time that he deserves or that Hillary Clinton has. He has not had the ability to connect with black people in the mass way.
It is not the job of art to mirror. Images reflected in a mirror appear to us in reverse. An artist's responsibility is to reveal consciousness; to produce a human document.
A lot of people need happiness in their lives. . . those who have lost their loved ones, those who have lost jobs and other things. Let your smile be a source of happiness to them and everyone else you meet.
I think a lot of high-profile artists like to make people think that. Oh, Im trying to choose my next project. This is a job. Sometimes your next job is so you can provide for your family; your kids are 16 and getting ready to go to college.
Students may feel the criticism is harsh, but I think it's possible they haven't had criticism before. It's my job to point out when something is badly done, or when there's no point of view. To build a brand you have to have something about you. If not personality, then some thought process. I'm 40, and they're young, so they're meant to be informing me. They should be bringing me a book or something that I haven't seen, not like some obscure chant book by Dominican monks, but an image of the way they see the world.
Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that's when you get into selling the house.
When I was in government, the South African economy was growing at 4. 5% - 5%. But then came the global financial crisis of 20082009, and so the global economy shrunk. That hit South Africa very hard, because then the export markets shrunk, and that includes China, which has become one of the main trade partners with South Africa. Also, the slowdown in the Chinese economy affected South Africa. The result was that during that whole period, South Africa lost something like a million jobs because of external factors.
At Starbucks 0 as in any business, in any life - there are so many hectic moments during the day when we are simply trying to do the job, trying to put out the fires, trying to solve any number of small problems, that we often lose sight of what it is we're really here to do.
As an active member of the Air Force, Army and Mine Warfare Caucuses, I meet with enlisted personnel and officers on a regular basis to learn more about their needs, both on the job and with their families.
The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in 'The Farmer in the Dell' standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others.
I quit my job, and went ashore to become a writer.
