A Quote by Ardal O'Hanlon

I have a certain sympathy with politicians having lived with one. I've seen how no matter how earnest or driven or energetic they are, it's still difficult to change things. I have been encouraged to go into politics, but I don't think I could make a contribution, it suits me better to be sniping from the sidelines.
In a globalized economy, it's very difficult for the U.K. to go it alone. Don't listen to politicians. Politicians say if the U.K. leaves, things will be better. I'm telling you, leaving could make things worse.
There seems to be something in the zeitgeist, and maybe it's a function of - I'm no analyst, nor am I a psychologist - when you look at things and say, What if I could go back and change things? I think we live in a world right now where people are asking those questions a lot. What if we could go back and change what we did? How would we change the way we handled things in the Middle East, and how would we change things with the banking industry, and how would we change economic and educational issues?
Thank goodness for the first snow, it was a reminder--no matter how old you became and how much you'd seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.
It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.
What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.
But what I realized when I was looking back at them was that no matter how different they are, they're still coming from me, and they're still coming from my brain and my set of obsessions. I think that no matter how different I tried to make them, there were just these certain questions that I just kept circling back to as I was writing. I think they were the ones I was really swept up in in that decade.
I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.
Politics, in general, when you're trying to change the world for the better in any kind of way, no matter how small or how big, it's inches.
I felt I could still make a contribution with ideas. I didn't know how, and it has taken me some time to work that out. There were things that mattered to me about the future of the country: inequality, what the post-financial crisis settlement would be. I still felt strongly about all that.
Those of us who work in politics can only make ourselves useful if our heads are filled with things that we can contribute to the political space. JFK had this quote about how if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew about politics, the world would be a better place. Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.
Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet
I used to read more when I was a kid than I do now. It was all sort of fuel for the fire to teach you how to think and how to make things and it informed the architecture that I was doing. It's better coming in with that history and that kind of knowledge and depth of understanding of humanity that is very important for building buildings - for understanding people and how they should live and how you could make your lives better and stuff like that.
When the ball is in the air, my job is to catch it, no matter where it's at, no matter how it is, no matter how difficult or how easy, you've just got to make it.
One of the rules that I always follow is that no matter how crazy characters may act, and no matter how absurd or strange their actions may be, that it's justified in the character's mind why they are doing it. Not to get all heady about it, but it's fun for me to test how far I can go with things while still keeping it grounded enough that you believe that the character really believes that what he's doing will get him what he wants. It's a personal challenge to me to see how far I can go with that.
Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
Two things were falling apart, my personal life, my professional life. And I realized that all those things were supposed to make me happy, but nothing could fill me up except myself. So I went into analysis. I went to see a doctor, to talk about my lack of self-esteem. I don't know how to say it better: my lack of self-esteem, my insecurity, and how these things were not going to fill me up. And I'd better fix myself and then find out what I liked. For me, therapy was the greatest gift I could ever give myself. There's nothing I could have done for myself that would've been better.
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