I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.

Charles McCarry

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

A. N. Wilson

Time Sad Music

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

Abraham Lincoln

Men Great Yin

Those who incline to very strictly utilitarian views may perhaps feel that the peculiar powers of the Analytical Engine bear upon questions of abstract and speculative science rather than upon those involving everyday and ordinary human interests.

Ada Lovelace

Science Power Who

Owing to some peculiarity in my nervous system, I have perception of some things, which no one else has; or at least very few, if any... I can throw rays from every quarter of the universe into one vast focus.

Ada Lovelace

Art Wing Win

I wish to add my mite towards expounding & interpreting the Almighty, & his laws & works, for the most effective use of mankind; and certainly, I should feel it no small glory if I were enabled to be one of his most noted prophets (using this word in my own peculiar sense) in this world.

Ada Lovelace

Work War World

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

Adam Smith

Men Great Up

The course that I have uniformly pursued, ever since I became a missionary, has been rather peculiar. In order to become an acceptable and eloquent preacher in a foreign language, I deliberately abjured my own. When I crossed the river, I burnt my ships.

Adoniram Judson

Age Uniform UN

I suppose when I was writing 'V for Vendetta' I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: 'Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact?' So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world... It's peculiar.

Alan Moore

Great Art You

Everything you've ever read of mine is first-draft. This is one of the peculiarities of the comics field. By the time you're working on chapter three of your masterwork, chapter one is already in print. You can't go back and suddenly decide to make this character a woman, or have this one fall out of a window.

Alan Moore

Work Time Your

Woodstock didn't define a generation because everyone showed up or those who did were a perfectly representative sample. It defined a generation because, for a few days, it bottled its peculiar zeitgeist.

Alexandra Petri

Zeitgeist Woodstock Woods

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

Alfred Adler

Wit Which Very

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

Alfred Russel Wallace

Than T Spoon

Whatever happens to science in schools, there's something peculiar going on if students don't see it as creative.

Alice Roberts

Science Whatever Thing

There is a peculiar burning odor in the room, like explosives. the kitchen fills with smoke and the hot, sweet, ashy smell of scorched cookies. The war has begun.

Alison Lurie

War Wit UN

People of the future may suffer not from an absence of choice but from a paralysing surfeit of it. They may turn out to be victims of that peculiarly super-industrial dilemma: overchoice.

Alvin Toffler

Future Victims Victim

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Ambrose Bierce

Who Virtue Those

Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.

Angelina Grimke

Women Sympathy Men

I actually have a peculiar feminism that does not involve the idea that women shouldn't be sexy. Female characters written in comics have always been pretty damned sexy, and used their sexuality. And I don't have any problem with that.

Ann Nocenti

Women Men Written

I'm interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

Anthony Hopkins

Time Us Tim

I'm a private victim of a peculiar household.

Anthony Horowitz

Victim Use Us

It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.

Anton Seidl

What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy.

Arthur Hertzberg

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

Barbara Amiel

One of the strangest experiences one can have is to sleep on stage, as I once did in Sydney when I'd lost the key to my flat. I had to stay at night in a bed, which conveniently was on stage because my character Sandy Stone did his monologue from a bed. To wake up looking at a shadowy auditorium is a very peculiar feeling.

Barry Humphries

There is this peculiar blind spot in the culture of academic medicine around whether withholding trial results is research misconduct. People who work in any industry can reinforce each others' ideas about what is okay.

Ben Goldacre

Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times - almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.

Bette Davis

Power is a very peculiar thing. It's like the ego. The ego's only there to keep you above water. Once we realize something good about ourselves, we have a tendency to abuse the gift.

Billy Dee Williams

I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things.

Billy Sunday

When you work with web design companies in San Francisco, you end up with a bunch of twenty-somethings who have their own cultural peculiarities, including obscurity for its own sake. You give those guys a website for a banking institution and they screw it up, because they are designing for themselves.

Brenda Laurel

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Brian Eno

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.

Brian Eno

I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say.

Carly Simon

Courage is a peculiar kind of fear.

Charles Kennedy

I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.

Charles McCarry

The revealed Word awakened me, but it was the preached Word that saved me, and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights.

Charles Spurgeon

The staple of our Australian colonies, but more particularly of New South Wales, the climate and the soil of which are peculiarly suited to its production, - is fine wool.

Charles Sturt

There seems to be a peculiar kind of clamor for comics. And I'm not sure how much a part of reality that is. I think partly it's based on some idea that comics are what everybody wants to read - and I don't think that's the case.

Chris Ware

They sell these golf aids that attach to your knee and your head and are supposed to keep your swing correct. It's futile beyond belief. I've never bought any, but I could watch those ads for 24 hours straight. People with straight faces saying this thing will take strokes off your game - that's my peculiar obsession.

Christopher Guest

Certainly, anyone whom I've witnessed, who has gone through something horrible and life-changing, has a sense of ironic humor, or an ability to look at the peculiarities of the world and find humor in it.

Christopher Heyerdahl

Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure.

Christopher Lasch

I enjoy doing complicated or peculiar people.

Christopher Lloyd

Vice, by comparison with terrible accidents, has its own peculiar explanation. For, in a way, it does occur in accordance with the rationale of nature, and its occurrence is not, so to speak, useless in relation to the whole world. For otherwise, the good would not exist, either.

Chrysippus

What sets 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' apart is Riggs's use of 'found' photographs as a spark of inspiration for the narrative. 'Found' describes art created from common objects that are not normally considered art.

Claire Cameron

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

Clive Bell

John Goodman is like the Jackie Chan of acting. Any prop that you put in front of him, he's going to take advantage of it in some peculiar way.

Dan Trachtenberg

The anti-apartheid prisoners on the island, like so many in every age and nation, found that Shakespeare had a peculiar ability to gentle their condition. They used to gather clandestinely to read the plays; on one occasion, the book was passed around for each man to mark his favourite lines.

Daniel Hannan

I think all regions have had their peculiarities of speech rounded off by television, radio, and people travel so much more now.

Daniel Woodrell

There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be.

David Antin

That's one of the peculiar things about bad moods - we often fool ourselves and create misery by telling ourselves things that simply are not true.

David D. Burns

What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.

David Hume