Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
If you are ambitious to talk well, you must be as much as possible in the society of well-bred, cultured people. If you seclude yourself, though you are a college graduate, you will be a poor converser.
I'm extremely ambitious. I don't know why people are afraid to say that. I won't sell my soul to the devil, but I do want success and I don't think that's bad.
Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.
Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.
I worked with fantastic actors, fantastic directors. People I would never otherwise have met. Was I limited? Yes. Did I use it as I could have? No. But I was always ambivalent about Hollywood and what I wanted. And ambivalence in our business is no good for success.
A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war.
We simply have to reign in the piggish people and money-hungry lawyers who chase every ambulance they see and expect companies and individuals to pay for everything that goes wrong.
Ever since I was quite young, I was in St. John's Ambulance or the Red Cross; latterly, I've been involved in voluntary work with the mentally handicapped and Abbeyfield Old People's Homes.
People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance.
Now the ambulance is always ready; the paramedics are always ready. People in the crowd can get help without risk. If you look at the Fabrice Muamba case, this is what helped save his life - the paramedics are there.
I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.
I believe I have a calling. Do you know what that calling is? To stand up in a new and hard core, radical way for the Lord. In the process, if I insult a couple of people, if I offend a couple of people, and if I got to shake it up a little bit, as long as it is led by the Holy Spirit, amen.
My point is simply this: I believe I have a calling. Do you know what that calling is? To stand up in a new and hard core, radical way for the Lord. In the process, if I insult a couple of people, if I offend a couple of people, and if I got to shake it up a little bit, as long as it is led by the Holy Spirit, amen.
Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives rather than gymnastics of style or literary trends. It's a certain kind of academic who undervalues realism, largely because it is not amenable to endless exegesis.
Perhaps the people of Twitter are more amenable to your babbling than your immediate family, but that doesn't necessarily make digital communication a beneficial distraction when we have an immediate social environment.
No law is permanent or steady. The law is not made of steel. The law is made by Parliament. It goes to the people, to the ground. A lot many suggestions come once it is implemented. So many laws have been amended after receiving people's suggestions.
It's crazy that the Constitution has to be amended to clarify what for the majority of Americans is a clear and true statement: corporations are not people.
