I realised that although I was fascinated with America, its history and culture, I was not interested in becoming American.
I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.
With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) - the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable - with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life.
The girl was lighter without her heart. She danced barefoot on the hot roads, and her feet were not cut by the glass or stones that studded her way. She spoke to the dead whenever they visited her. She tried to be kind, but they realised that they no longer had anything in common with her, and she realised it, too. So they went their separate ways.
Looking back, nothing seems so simple than a utopian vision realised.
You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.
I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
I've realised I need a gnawing, nagging, anxious doubt when I wake at 4 A. M.
I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.
I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.
Charlie Christian showed me a lot, and was a great help, but even then, I realised that if I was going to make it, it was no use copying Charlie
I realised that I had a choice to either feel angry about not having arms and legs, or thankful for having my family, friends and my little foot.
We realised that it was important to embrace this popcorn logic, that it works, that it's funnier when you fire 20 rounds from one tiny pistol. Then it becomes the joke, it's funnier when you pay less attention.
When I was 14, I saw someone getting their face and wrists slashed with a knife in a pub in Catford. Nobody lifted a finger. That's when I realised that violence wasn't funny. At all.
I don't think I realised how stressed I was, being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It's not easy on anybody.
I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had. . . maybe I could even quit renting.
I have been brought up in a culture where capital punishment is indeed anathema. I have always thought of myself as a principled opponent to capital punishment. However, when thinking about how the topic is handled in other cultures, in particular the American, Russian and Chinese ones, I have realised that my own tack on the issue was utterly superficial.
Judging other people is such a natural and reflex phenomenon that even when somebody advises everybody not to judge anybody, actually he never realised that he has already judged that people judge others.
Russia is probably one of the first countries to have been confronted with this problem of terrorism. It took some time before the international community realised the danger terrorism poses.
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.