I'd been told, or warned, that when you paint one room, not only will it look nice, but it will also make the room next to it look as if raccoons have been living in it for the past decade.
I think the economic empowerment of women that has been growing over the past decade is at the 'inflection point' with this global recession. Women are, we believe, the solution for their families in their ability to go out and increase household income.
Calling a young artist 'great' these days can give one the heebie-jeebies: The word has been denatured in the past decade.
Art is for anyone. It just isn't for everyone. Still, over the past decade, its audience has hugely grown, and that's irked those outside the art world, who get irritated at things like incomprehensibility or money.
When I am up in Paris then the restaurant which has remained my favourite for the past decade is Guy Savoy. The menu is huge, sophisticated and very creative but I keep to simple choices.
If we do not act quickly, Jaxport will fall behind competitors on the East Coast - and the economic engine that has driven this community for the past decade will be put in danger.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren't among them.
I don't believe that the problems in the VA are necessarily about money. When I look back over the problems of the VA over the past decade, this is fundamentally a system that hasn't kept up with modernization in the way that the rest of health care in the private sector has.
Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.
Over the past decade, prescribing information has grown more and more complex, more and more dense and more difficult to negotiate.
If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them.
The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events: a point in history and nothing else.
Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record keepers, forever searching past events for elusive patterns - and forever believing that such patterns are to be found.
Unfortunately, these past few years, you can work hard, try to be as successful as possible, follow the rules, and President Barack Obama will do everything he can to stand in your way.
As I said a moment ago, there is no higher priority in our budget, or certainly in the budgets of the past few years, than providing for what is needed for the protection and security of our country and support of our troops.
There's no shame in enjoying a quiet life. And that's been the realization of the past few years for me.
I have been interested in Irish traditional music for the past few years.
I would have thought that I would have become one of those parents - just because it's my nature to be such a perfectionist - that anything falling short, I would have seen as a failure. But something has happened to me over the past few years - it's not Zen, believe me, I'm not at all Zen - but I'm so appreciative of even the chaos.
I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.
During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.
