I sat down and wrote, 'Are your emotions pure? Are they the stuff of heroes

or the alloyed mess of the beaten? How do you stand in relation to the potato?' And it was a lot of fun, and I kept going and woke up at some point in some horror that I had about 142 pages of this.
Padgett Powell

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.
John Muir

Victorville gave me opportunity to go inside and explore my imagination a bit.
Keith Stanfield

Unlike the Marxists, I have no mind block against the U.S.
Mamata Banerjee

I was not a 'Doctor Who' fan. As a kid, I thought it was scary and for boys.
Catherine Tate

When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.
J. B. Smoove

I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.
Ashwin Sanghi

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.
Amy Hoggart

When not working, I use a lot of treatments; from ancient casero - honey, avocado, stuff like that - other times, I buy ones you leave on for a few minutes. I don't blow dry my hair ever unless for work; I'd rather go for the natural look.
Kate del Castillo

Gemeoss

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue

the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah. Meir Soloveichik A sequel is such a daunting thing, because you don't want to lose the magic and the charm of the first one. Sandra Bullock Having a loving relationship with our spouse or with our children is what leads to the long-term happiness we all seek. Clayton Christensen My finding of myself as an artist, which I think in itself helped me to find just who I am and how I want to express myself, is entirely - in conjunction, of course, with my family, particularly my mom - founded on teachers. Uzo Aduba Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?' Sophie Hannah I very much want to do things my way, and I want to control the result. Hiam Ab...

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in

a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. John Henrik Clarke I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters. Susan Orlean I don't inflict horrors on readers. In my research, I've uncovered truly terrible documentations of cruelty and torture, but I leave that offstage. I always pull back and let the reader imagine the details. We all know to one degree or another the horrors of war. Alan Furst My nutritionist has done a great job in changing my diet after we established I am allergic to things like gluten - I can't eat pizza, pasta and bread. I have lost some weight, but my movement is sharper ...

The reaction to 'Aftermath' has been far worse than to 'A Life's Work,' yet I

find I'm perhaps a little less touched by it. In both cases, I've coped artistically by believing the criticisms weren't right. They upset me, but they didn't challenge my understanding of how to write, nor of how morality functions in literature. Rachel Cusk I'm not one to take revenge. If someone does something wrong to me I leave it in the hands of the universe to take care of that person. Lana Parrilla At the end of the day, I think that I'm making music for me as that 12-year-old kid in front of my boombox every day. I try to think about, if I'm that little kid, what would he like? Danny Brown I can't see where there is anywhere left to move. If you don't have a recount it's hard to receive any more votes. Robert Torricelli I have no friends and no enemies - only competitors. Aristotle Onassis I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatr...

The monetary impacts of malaria from the household to the global level are significant.

Malaria tends to strike during harvest season, rendering families too sick and too weak to perform the work necessary to earn a living. Malaria-stricken families spend an average of over a quarter of their income on malaria treatment. Tedros Adhanom It's not in the interest of most mapping companies to make those changes as they occur, but if you give the power to local people, you can be sure that you're always getting the best information from the folks that actually drive those roads every day. Noam Bardin We are all pleased when our names are pronounced and spelled correctly. Russell M. Nelson Music and dance is part of everything in New Orleans. So I grew up appreciating it all. Dawn Richard I get things out of my system through my songs, but, because they can be about so many different things, it takes me a while to get through them emotionally. Sharon Van Etten I like to think I've changed the centre of gravity on lots of national debates. Nigel Farage I was a membe...

Cyberpunk was really a reaction against old boy sci-fi which was

about white guys in space who would come up with some kind of technological thing. Pat Cadigan Look, have whatever in your collection at home, but everybody needs a little Friday night. And really, that is Chic. Bernard Edwards I was taught to whistle as a little girl by an undertaker. I used to sit in his workshop, watching him planing wood for the coffins, and he used to whistle all the time - and eventually I started whistling, too. I can whistle anything, particularly trumpet tunes from Classic FM. Susan Hill I've been on this kick reading about the beginning of forensic science: autopsies, fingerprinting, psychological profiling. I've been reading a lot of books about forensic anthropology. Caitlin Kittredge I'm trying to go with the flow, which is not what I used to do. I used to try to micromanage my career choices. Aaron Lazar Rocket engines generally are simpler than jet engines, not more complicated. Henry Spencer As a child growing up in World ...

I don't remember any sibling rivalry growing up, because by the time I was really

conscious, Tom was going away to college. My relationship with him, which is a very close one, really developed in more recent years. David Hyde Pierce 'Yield' was completed in 1997 and released in 1998. In the spring of 1997, I had made a decision to stop taking medications that I had been taking daily since 1988. Jack Irons Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable. Walter Lang Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved. Anne Dudley It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon. Christian Nestell Bovee The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are si...

Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn't mean people

have stopped reading books. Printed books won't go away, but ebooks won't go away, either. David Morrell The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it's very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk. Bill Gates My individual power is limited. I want to use my high-profile way to wake people up to take action together to do good things. I can only awake them with my performance art and creativity. Chen Guangbiao Your conscious brain cannot multitask. If I'm speaking to you and checking my I-Phone at the same time, I'm doing neither. This is why our society is frazzled; this misconception that we can consciously do more than one thing at a time effectively. Deepak Chopra When I'm not acting, I'm at the beach. I like to spend a lot of time in the water, surfing. Brenton Thwaites While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination. Kevin Spacey Shorts wager on p...

I've kind of had to make a career of playing villains. In order to stay

employed, I had to figure out how to play bad guys. Jeffrey Pierce I am basically in awe of every family's ability to make decisions for their kids. Rebecca Stead I was working my first adult job, a quasi journalistic job, writing content for a website. In the offices, we had banks of TVs, papers, a constant media stream, which was unusual for 2001. Garth Risk Hallberg My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore. Athol Fugard Journalists should have been the first to tell people what Obamacare would mean to them. They are now the last to figure all of this out. Rush Limbaugh We all want to be a little glamorous, a little playful and a little mischievous at times. Jason Wu No, I don't think I'm ever going to get serious. Blake Shelton I'm into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think...

The primary reason that I'd be here or that Don Payne Jr. would be here

is for you to know that members of Congress actually exist and are human. Rodney Frelinghuysen I always get stopped by security and immigration, telling me, 'Tell me who the terrorist is, or we won't stamp your passport!' The last time that somebody did that to me - at LAX, actually - I was like, 'Hey, don't ever ask a brown girl that in an American airport!' Priyanka Chopra I was constantly being told I shouldn't talk so much about how I was feeling. They seemed to think I was giving too much away to my competitors. Showing signs of weakness. But I've always thought that was rubbish. Victoria Pendleton Women in the post-Fifties world were appendages. They existed to serve men. Their lives and concerns didn't matter, except insofar as they impinged on Important Male Things. Judith Tarr Our employees chose SK on belief that they will be happier working here and that the company will make the society happier. Chey Tae-won I've never ...

Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places

which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in. Emmeline Pankhurst I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as. Damien Chazelle Personally, sometimes I'll lament the journey of an Asian-American actor, walking into audition rooms in 1999. Kelvin Yu When I was a little kid, it was not uncommon for a cousin or an uncle, before they would even say 'Hello,' to gush, 'You know, your mother's brisket is just incredible; it's so good.' That was an inspiration for creating a love song in that well-worn terrain of the relationship between a Jewish boy and his mother. Rick Moranis I happen to be the kind of reader who, if I like something, I don't want it to end. Gar...