A Quote by James Lasdun
For a long period of history, you were what people said about you, and if your reputation was stained, you were in very serious trouble. People fought duels over this. Then it fades away historically.
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If you're constantly being reminded of the ways in which your history and your narrative as a people were rooted in loss and decay, then you're in deep trouble. Once you make a certain kind of peace with the past, then you should be completely oriented towards speculation about the future.
Malaysians, during the colonial period, were not given the top positions: we were always subordinate. Fortunately for us, the people who took over were mainly civil servants: people who were serving the Government.
If you really watch 'The Voice' and follow Adam, he's very ADD. He's kind of one place here, and then he's over here the next minute; he's kind of all over the place. When it comes down to being very serious, and especially when we were talking about the finale song, he's actually very serious, and he's a very good listener.
It is the idea of 'People' to treat its material as if it were history and, what is more, as if it were the history of a happy period.
Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time
If Mother Culture were to give an account of human history using these terms, it would go something like this: ' The Leavers were chapter one of human history -- a long and uneventful chapter. Their chapter of human history ended about ten thousand years ago with the birth of agriculture in the Near East. This event marked the beginning of chapter two, the chapter of the Takers. It's true there are still Leavers living in the world, but these are anachronisms, fossils -- people living in the past, people who just don't realize that their chapter of human history is over. '
I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.
It's easier to keep your stuff then it is to expose it, because some people don't get it. At the cross, at the feet of Jesus, there were some people who said, "Good! I'm glad that you're dead." Then there were some that were crying and saying, "Why are you doing this to this innocent man?" It is not easy to do.
When Google went into China, there were some people who said they shouldn't compromise at all - that it is very bad for human rights to do so. But there were other people, particularly Chinese people, who said they were glad Google had gone in.
Now that they talk about Islam as being a violent faith, when you look at the history of Christendom, the Crusades and the many wars of religion that were fought, the cruelty of Christians in burning what they believed to be witches and burning heretics, and then very recently they were responsible for the Holocaust... it was Christians.
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
Here was a period where I was particularly attacked, and in untrue ways, some people online said some things that were not true about me - but it was very hurtful. And there was like, a period of time that it was very panicky, I was very upset. And my son at the time was, I guess seven, eight months old, and I would wake up early with him and let my wife sleep.
Being known for Bond, certainly when you're in foreign countries, makes people curious. You get to see presidents because their wives were curious; their children were curious about Bond or The Saint or whatever. Then once you have your foot through the door, you can then let them see that you're serious about what you're talking about, and not just a twit.
You have to be very productive in order to become excellent. You have to go through a poor period and a mediocre period, and then you move into your excellent period. It may be very well be that some of you have done quite a bit of writing already. You maybe ready to move into your good period and your excellent period. But you shouldn't be surprised if it becomes a very long process.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.
It's very nice to be asked to anybody's wedding. Particularly if it's the Prince of Wales. I learned a lot from it, which was to end early and get away. I suppose one would have to look back historically and see who other royals had at their weddings. Were there people at Queen Elizabeth's wedding who were common like myself?
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