Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.
INNATE is God in human beings. INNATE is good in human
beings. INNATE cannot be cheated, violated, or tricked. INNATE is always
waiting, ready to communicate with you, and when INNATE is in contact
you are in tune with the Infinite.
American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.
I think evolution should be taught as an accepted principle. I say that also as the daughter of a school teacher, a science teacher, who has instilled in me a respect for science. I think it should be taught in our schools. I won't ever deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is earth. But - that is not a part of state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught in science class.
I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
What it taught me was forgiveness. It taught me that when people present themselves in a certain way, there's probably some back story or issue or reason for the way that they are. It's not you. It's them. And a lot of times, its about something that's completely out of their control
I think you can fan the flames, but I think in the same way that a mathematician is a mathematician - He's not taught to be a mathematician. He either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well.
For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.
No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in a way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains as to wilderness, as that which declares that the world was made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.
Character drives the story, and the story drives the book. I don't think about where the action should go, or how much there should be, until it's required by the characters. When I find myself adding conflict just because I'm afraid that the reader might get bored, I know I've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
I do think that an understanding of contemporary work in the cognitive sciences has a profound effect on how one views the workings of the mind. It doesn't work the way we pretheoretically think it does. Such an understanding, of course, should have a large effect on one's views in philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology.
I think story-telling is innate in human beings, it's something that we've done since we scrawled across cave walls.
A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
To me, the fundamental thing - well, I guess I see a lot of people debating in the wrong way. A lot of the debate is, should we go to the coasts, should we go to the center, should we go to the left, should we go to the right?
I think one of the innate challenges that comes with being on ESPN is that it is a sports network. It is an entertainment space largely, and because of that - as should be the case - politics aren't expected to be addressed in a meaningful way at a sports network.
I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.