Everybody is pretty good in the first quarter. Second quarter, you have a little bump or two on you coming into the half. By the time the third quarter comes around, you're tired, you're laboring. When you come to the fourth quarter, it calls on your character.
The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime!
In the last quarter of the 20th century, Britons have been understandably obsessed with the problem of having too little power in the world. In the third quarter of the 18th century, by contrast, their forebears were perplexed by the problem of having acquired too much power too quickly over too many people.
Running long offers a dress rehearsal. Running long teaches the stress of lifting feet 5,000 times per hour. Running long builds confidence.
If you were to ask me, 'What the hell does a musician have in common with a restaurant?' I would say a huge amount. It's show time every day, it's a team of people, like, running a circus, which is running a rock-and-roll band.
During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant.
We are all a quarter good, a quarter bad, a quarter animal and a quarter child which equals a whole bunch of crazy.
From my quarter-a-century experience as a fighter for democracy, there is never a final victory for democracy. It is always a struggle in every generation, and you have to take up the course of time and time again.
I really like the idea of restaurant life, especially in New York where everyone has small apartments - that restaurant culture where you sit at a table for a long time and the afternoon goes by and you're kind of living there. I like that more than nightlife.
If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls.
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.
It is a long time now since I started running but I still remember running up and down hills and running to school as a kid. When I was young I would run for fun and I didn't know back then that this would be my career.
You don't see what's gone before. A lot of that can be long, long boring hours in the gym, long, long hours on the track or, for the likes of Paula Radcliffe, long hours out on the road in the rain running and running.
One day I may commit to a city and settle down and do the restaurant thing - when I'm ready and however and whatever the definition of a restaurant means to me and how I want to cook for people. Many lessons to be learned that are probably long overdue for me and I'm finding them through all channels of exploration and keeping all my doors open.
Over the course of the last quarter century I've learned a lot. And the main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.
When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that time were.