I was delighted with Baku. People said I was completely mad; I was so happy when it all turned out all right.
Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn't mean chase after somebody who's turned their back.
When I turned 40, I was like, huh. I accept myself more now. It was much more comforting.
A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not a part of the mechanism.
She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.
It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.
My only boss was the clock on the wall and my only friend, never really was a friend at all. I've traded love for pennies, sold my soul for less. Lost my ideas in that long tunnel of time. And I've turned inside out and around about and back and then found myself right back where I started again
I turned my head to the sky, to the sun, to the stars, and put a little piece of my love in every star, in the moon, in the sun, and they loved me back. And I became one with the moon and the sun and the stars, and my love kept growing and growing. And I put a little piece of my love in every human, and I became one with the whole of humanity. Wherever I go, whomever I meet, I see myself in their eyes, because I am a part of everything, because I love.
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
I have come," said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him.
I was lucky enough to make four pictures with Barbara. In the first I turned her in, in the second I killed her, in the third I left her for another woman, and in the fourth I pushed her over a waterfall. The one thing all these pictures had in common was that I fell in love with Barbara Stanwyck - and I did, too.
I know that I will always regret it later in life if I had turned down the chance to play at another great club like Real Madrid.
This is a sport (wrestling) that has turned many boys into men and many men into leaders. And it is a sport in which you can be a giant regardless of how big you are.
That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.
I turned everybody on so, psychologically, I guess I was pushing the boundaries creativity.
I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.
With my eyes turned to the past, I walk backwards into the future.
I actually turned down an opportunity for a private interview with Adolph Hitler.
When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth. . . It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.
Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn't be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we've turned it into.