London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.
A. A. Gill
I generally only eat one meal a day, which is pretty unusual for a restaurant reviewer. It's not that I have a problem with food; I'll eat anything that doesn't involve a bet, a dare, or an initiation ceremony.
The suit is the polite taming, the socialising, the neutering, of riding and military kit. Those pointless buttons on the cuff were moved from lateral to vertical.
Everyone has to go to a funeral at some time and you need to be dark and sombre, and in a black tie.
Texting isn't writing. It's not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It's a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.
Gordon Brown is a character from a tragic opera, twisted by ambition and a Presbyterian sense of fateful destiny. He has waited 13 years, mostly in Tony Blair's shadow, for this poisoned chalice and has a pessimist's luck.
Margaret Thatcher was as viscerally hated at home as she was warmly respected abroad.
Gift giving is one of the oldest forms of human interaction. It is a behaviour all cultures and all classes share.
The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.
A. B. Yehoshua
I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.
Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.
So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.
The literary trappings and moralizing of science fiction I find insufficiently compelling.
In my own view, Hamas's frustration derives from a lack of legitimization by Israel and by much of the world. It is this frustration that leads them to such destructive desperation. That's why we need to grant them status as a legitimate enemy - before we talk about an agreement or, alternatively, about a frontal war.
My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.
A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.
Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
A. E. Housman
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
A. E. van Vogt
The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
A lot of cable television is shot on a single camera. Our eyes are more trained to that. It takes the camera off the crane, away from observing the action, to becoming a character in the story along with everyone else. People are getting used to that.
I am just your everyday, average girl. I live by the beach. I wear flip flops. I don't wear make-up. I go to the gym.
There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.
Communication is so much better when people are vulnerable.
IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.
I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.
Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place - that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.
If four things are followed - having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance - then anything can be achieved.
In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation.
The youth need to be enabled to become job generators from job seekers.
We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.
The world has today 546 nuclear plants generating electricity. Their experience is being continuously researched, and feedback should be provided to all. Nuclear scientists have to interact with the people of the nation, and academic institutions continuously update nuclear power generation technology and safety.
A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.
Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.
I don't want to expose my personal life. It's best that people know me for my work. My family doesn't want to be surrounded by cameras. We want to live like any other family.
The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.
Sometimes, a remix is good because it reaches a whole new generation. But when it gets too much, it's irritating. Also, the original composer needs to be credited properly.
I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.
A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.
I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it's because I grew up on a love of history, philosophy, science and religion, but not to think too much about yourself.
In novels in general - and also on the television - we do live in a world where bodies is what we are. We do not talk about the spirit or the soul, and there is a sense that we no longer talk about beliefs, either Freudian or Marxist.
I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together.
I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait.
Harry S. Truman had his moods. His birthplace is the only tourist attraction in America where you don't see Japanese with cameras.
I've never really felt like a veteran. I've never felt like the guy who's like, 'OK, everyone needs to look up to me and respect me.' I've always just been one of the guys that people are excited to get in the ring with. That's all I want.
Both for my wife and myself, the personal friendships that have grown out of scientific contacts with colleagues from many different countries have been an important part of our lives, and the travels we have made together in connection with the world-wide scientific co-operation have given us rich treasures of experiences.
The way actors interact with their audience via Twitter is a part of their personality. So if I interact less, that is a part of my personality. I am mostly lost in my own world.