A Quote by David Ignatius
2011 was a year in which events rarely turned out as predicted, and when much of the world seemed shrouded in turmoil and uncertainty. It was difficult for government analysts back in Washington to know just where they were on the map, let alone where they were heading.
Related Quotes
Interestingly, a number of the people I know - probably you do, too - who predicted that Trump would win were precisely Russians and Ukrainians who found the political style familiar and just asked, 'Well, why couldn't it work there?' They were the ones who turned out to be right.
They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.
Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.
Communism wasn't a word that I thought of when I went to Cuba. The original Fidelistas were not Communists. They were graduate students at the university and law students. After the Fidelistas took over, they went to Washington and tried to get support from the U.S. government, which turned them down. They were in a desperate political and economic situation, so they took the offer from the Soviet Union. Communism was a matter of necessity.
There is so much uncertainty out there, and the government in Washington doesn't seem to get it. What's needed is a new business environment.
It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do so. The main difference between the protests of 2011-2012 and these protests today is that they didn't have permits. These were - the people who were coming out into the streets were very young people, for the most part, who knew that they were all risking arrest. It's an extraordinary event.
9/11 just seemed to come out of the blue. And there were people asking questions, but then there were no answers. At some point, it just turned into, "We've got to do what we've got to do." And I think those are the moments when you grow, when you get the opportunity to try to figure out, exactly as you said, what price are you paying, and if it's worth that price.
Here [in Wonder Boys] I had this group of characters where you didn't know which were the important ones or what direction they were heading.
Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere inside of your head, as if you were born with a complete map of this world already grafted onto the folds of your cerebellum and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?
When we were not shooting [The Hangover] we were sleeping, so pretty much every waking moment we spent together. And, you know, Bradley [Cooper], Zach [Galifianakis] and I were acquaintances before the movie started but we became good friends very quickly and spent so much time together that it was just inevitable we were either going to really hate each other or really like each other. Thank god it turned out to be the latter.
They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
I don't think I ever intended specifically to write for the young adult market. It's just that when the idea for City of Bones came to me, I knew the main characters were teenagers. In my mind they were just very clearly the ages they were, which turned out to mean it was a YA novel.
My clients were always poor folks, working folks, people who were in trouble and couldn't afford to pay a whole lot. I found it very difficult to say no to somebody who needed help, so most of my work turned out to be pro bono. It didn't start out that way, but it turned out that way because I never got paid.
Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born.
In the past the analysts were the department you never saw. They were the nerds at school. You went to see the investment bankers and maybe the salesmen but the Chinese walls divided them from the analysts. But new technology and the Internet changed all that.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist