It is not a shame to be knocked down by other people. The important thing is to ask when you're being knocked down, 'Why am I being knocked down?' If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for this person.
I always carry a book with me to read on the bus, and I tend to arrive everywhere early.
There's nothing greater than just having people that pick you up when you get knocked down.
Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work.
When I was having my hair and make-up done backstage at a fashion show, I would sneak in a copy of Dostoevsky and read it inside a copy of Elle or Vogue. But it would be pretentious of me to say I was more intelligent than the other supermodels.
One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else
One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.
[The Middle East conflict ] just kind of ran its course for me. For a long time I could justify doing it to myself, no matter how irrational it was. It was important to me and my work. And I just don't feel it in the same way any more. When it comes up and it's important to me, I'll do it, but more out of sense of duty than desire - which used to be a big part of it.
A rather ugly thing starts happening: the playwright finds himself knocked down for works that quite often are just as good or better than the works he's been praised for previously. And a lot of playwrights become confused by this and they start doing imitations of what they've done before, or they try to do something entirely different, in which case they get accused by the same critics of not doing what they used to do so well.
The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.
In Britain, the major public holiday used to be Guy Fawkes Day... that was celebrated on November 5th with things like bonfires and fireworks... I think that made Halloween seem preferable. The idea of having pumpkins and costumes and parties seemed much more appealing than burning down your neighborhood.
I do believe any hero is a person that can be knocked down. A failure isn't a person who gets knocked down; a failure is a person who stays down, and to me, the great heroes take the beating, get knocked down and stand back up again. Perseus is defined as one of the great heroes in literature, so you gotta take that on board.
My grandfather used to say to me when I was a boy, "Getting knocked down is no big prize - it's getting up that's the real trick." I couldn't agree more.
Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all.
Paul knew I could sing, write and play, and so he rang me. It knocked me sideways a little because I wasn't used to being a sidekick. That was the first time I'd been with a band with someone more famous than me.
I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece.