I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.
I get very unsettled by the mess of Christmas. I find the decorations a little bit hard, as my desire for everything to match is never fully satisfied.
Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.
I read a lot of highly unsuitable books for an 11-year-old. I was desperate to read as widely as possible. I thought, 'There are so many places I am never going to get the chance to visit, but I can if I read them.' And I did. I could go anywhere in the world - and off it - by reading.
If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.
I never want to be one of those artists who feels untouchable and extraordinary. I have to be genuine.
I will say again that I have never, and would never, harm a child. It sickens me that people have written untrue things about me.
Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.
Never leave a rhinestone unturned.
Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.
Earned a bachelor's at 27, then an M.F.A. that is still completely unused and in mint condition, never taken out of the box.
Today is a most unusual day, because we have never lived it before; we will never live it again; it is the only day we have.
If I had not played basketball and made the millions of dollars that I had made, I would never have been able to build a hospital in Congo. It started in 1997, and 10 years later I was able to unveil the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after my mother, in my hometown outside of Kinshasa. It was such a blessing.
A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.
You never want to hear that somebody didn't get to come to your show because they felt unwelcome or they felt like they wouldn't fit in - any of those things, it's a terrible precedent to set.
There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it.
I have never made any secret of any of my thoughts or areas of interest. I've always been honest, open, and upfront.
My parents never referenced Ethiopia that much, largely because of the circumstances under which we left. We left during a time of political upheaval, and there was a lot of loss that came with that, so my parents were reluctant to talk about those things. So I had, by and large, an American childhood.
The choice of personnel, perhaps the most important choice (because 'people are policy'), never proceeds according to plan, but there have been some successful transitions that upheld high standards.
I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early.
