Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself unable to do so, the reason being, I take it, that writing, even of the most impersonal sort, is for me a divestment, a striptease, even, so that if I start off undressed, I have nowhere to go.
Alan Bennett
The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.
Alfred Jarry
Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.
Andrew Weil
Actors should be timeless and impersonal.
Anne Parillaud
Good lawyering is usually cerebral and impersonally. You can convince a judge with a mastery of facts, detail, and precedent - not a story from the gut about how you feel a certain way.
Ari Melber
I used to say that I didn't want anything to do with e-mail. It seemed really impersonal, complicated and weird. I had no idea what an amazing way it is to reach people.
B. D. Wong
You have this idea that Hollywood is all about making money and is very impersonal. But 'Love, Simon' is such a passion project for director Greg Berlanti.
Becky Albertalli
When you go to the big city - you're in New York, Boston, you're in L.A. - you walk in the streets, and nobody says anything to you. It becomes so impersonal because there's so many people.
Ben Howland
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
Betty Friedan
Glorifying violence is terrible. Simulating sex is nothing - it's something so impersonal really.
Bo Derek
In the end, perhaps it will be the true romantics, not the nerds, who choose to flee from a world of impersonal, digitized relationships and into the arms of simulacrums with manners imported from simpler times.
Daniel H. Wilson
War can be so impersonal yet when we put a name, a face, a place and match it to families, then war is not impersonal.
Dennis Kucinich
I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.
Emil Cioran
Muscat itself is a mixture of impersonal modern buildings, shopping malls, mosques, traditional souks, tarmac and sand.
Fiona Bruce
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule.
Georg Simmel
Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.
An idea is so impersonal; it is yours today and the whole world's tomorrow.
George A. Moore
Fear hems us in, stops us from thinking clearly, and prevents us from either challenging oppression or engaging calmly with the impersonal fates.
George Monbiot
Connecting with people in person is so important. To look in the eyes of our girls and let them know that you really do support them transcends the impersonal connection of technology.
Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard - or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.
The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating, even awe-inspiring - but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of it.
The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.
Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.
When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees. As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law.
I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.
The average member of the public thinks of 'business' as an impersonal corporate entity owned by the very rich and managed by overpaid executives. There is an almost total failure to appreciate that 'business' actually embraces - in one way or another - most Americans.
I know that organic farms can be industrial and just as large and impersonal as conventional farms. Sometimes the free-range chickens aren't even allowed outside, and so they cluck-walk packed tight in a dim lit barn. But organic farms use fewer chemicals.
What I have always liked about Brighton is its impersonality. Since the 18th century, people have come, used the place and gone home again.
For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time.
What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation.
What better example than the World Cup is there of the fact that individual people are irrelevant while impersonal structures are invariant?
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
The Maori culture is different than our culture where we're most likely to introduce ourselves by email or fax and we conduct a lot of business in an impersonal way, whereas for Maori, the only way to do it is to make the pilgrimage and sit down face-to-face and have some tea.
People say I'm cold, that I'm impersonal on the court. Well, let me tell you, it's blood and guts out there.
Personally, I feel that in my own work I wanted to look programmed or impersonal but I don't really believe I am being impersonal when I do it. And I don't think you could do this.
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither 'good' or 'bad', and who knows neither love nor hatred.
The fact that the underlying laws of physics are deterministic and impersonal does not mean that at the human level we can't talk about ideas about reasons and goals and purposes and free will.
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.
By the '50s and '60s, war movies had become big and impersonal. They almost never bothered to characterize the Japanese enemy as particularly evil; in fact, they never bothered to characterize him at all.
We all know that little words or phrases can mean a lot, yet so few of us know just what to say. Phrases, such as 'chin up,' or 'it could be worse,' usually have the opposite effect; they feel tired and impersonal, even dismissive.
Y2K hype taps our native discomfort with the realities of a dynamic, evolving social order. It elevates personal, local contact over the impersonality of the 'extended order' of trade and technological networks. It suggests that we can wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.
Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.
I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.
