The days of noblesse oblige are long behind us, so our elite's entire claim to legitimacy rests on theories of equal opportunity and upward mobility, and the promise that 'merit' correlates with talents and deserts.
I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.
No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme scheme and sequence of long and short lines that goes without regular pattern, following the mood and whim of the poet. Such a form is known as an irregular ode.
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
Too oft is transient pleasure the source of long woes.
For a long time, I thought when you do a box set, you're giving up; you're saying, 'OK, I don't have anything left.' But now I've listened to some of the old stuff I haven't heard in 20 to 40 years with fresh ears. It's like, 'Oh yeah, I can see where people might want to to hear some of this stuff that didn't make it onto the records.'
I reckon I probably worked for Euripides a long time ago. I do think we have many Earth walks and it's possible that he's an old friend. Does that sound too stupid for words? Quite frankly I think I've been an actor in so many lifetimes.
If there is a public perception at all, they see the producer as a big old guy who smokes a cigar and has lots of money and lots of power. That's not what a producer is and, if it ever was what a producer was, it certainly hasn't been for a long time.
I will have a song that I'm in love with for a couple of months and then I'll go to something else. That's just constantly changing. And sometimes I will go back to old one that I haven't heard for a long time.
I'd see an old person on the street and start crying. I couldn't understand how people could cope, knowing they only had so long left. It would be like dominoes and then the last one fell and I'm a little heap on the floor. Doctors put me on anti-depressants for a couple of years.
I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.
I came to America, and I made good. It's an old story, but it hasn't been told in a long time. Usually, it's, 'I'm an immigrant, I came here and got persecuted.' My story is I came here, I worked hard, and it worked out all right. So it's still available.
Whenever there's a new form of media, we always think it's going to replace the old thing, and it never does. We still have radio, however long after TV was introduced.
If I quit all the things I loved cold turkey, I knew it would only be so long before I went back to my old ways.
When I first started, as long as you were a bit brown, you could play any kind of ethnic anything. Now it's much more localised and specific. I feel like a wise old woman looking back on the evolution of how much more sophisticated audiences are.
An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I should one day behold the scenes, among which my fancy had so long wandered.
As long as I have the talent and there's a demand for the old Chinese man - whether he's a philosopher, or a master, or an old-time restaurant owner, or a villain, or a so-called good guy - I will always be working.
I am fortunate that I have two older brothers, and they have definitely helped me with being competitive just to keep up with them. We were always encouraged to try what we wanted to do. As long as we tried our hardest and did the best we could, it didn't matter what we did.
