It is curious to look back and realize upon what trivial and apparently coincidental circumstances great events frequently turn as easily and naturally as a door on its hinges.
You know what I'm great at? Trivial Pursuit. What good is that gonna do you in life? It has the word 'trivial' in the name. The game is basically telling you that you pursue trivial things. Trivial - as in not important. Trivial - as in maybe you should've gone to grad school.
When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they're not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work, I could easily write a very convincing sort of account of it that made it look like I had planned it all out from day one and that this led logically to that and then I did this and then that followed quite naturally from that. But that's not how it felt.
But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
It's the mix of the trivial and the great events that make up history. It's the low things about high people that make it fascinating, and that's why it would be a shame to exclude the trivial things. That mixing up is not just at the heart of history. It's at the heart of how to live a great life.
If one wants to be an ox one can easily turn one's back on hum suffering and look after one's own skin.
Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.
Religion hinges upon faith, politics hinges upon who can tell the most convincing lies or maybe just shout the loudest, but science hinges upon whether its conclusions resembe what actually happens.
He was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn't realize that once a noose is tied it will fit one neck as easily as another.
Great things are possible only to strong souls and it's from the trivial events of daily life that strength is won.
We're all naturally curious when we're eight years old. But as most people get older, they become less and less curious, so they ask other people to be curious for them. That's what I do for a living.
If you look around anywhere, layers are an important part of, not just the story and the concept, but the world you're in. If you just turn around and look at your office door, there's a door, and there's something behind it.
I can easily go to America, or I can easily escape to some places in Europe with friends. But the place for me is the Philippines. The struggle is there. I cannot turn my back on it. It's a responsibility.
It's hard when you look a certain way. I look All-American, sweet, girl-next-door, so naturally those are the parts that are going to land on my doorstep.
My dad is a great writer. Naturally talented, naturally charming. He embodies that back-in-the-day cool.
Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.
But we look back now, and we realize the Great Society was not a success.