Top 1200 You Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I like to see a film and then start scoring it in my mind while doing something unrelated. You just grasp a film and start working, and something unpredictable comes out from a third element. The mind, the more active it is, the more productive it is.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

If you respect a language and culture, it shows in your work.

My hair grows and grows; you cannot stop it - that fellow grows, it grows wild.

If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.

If there is no criticism, you become lazy. But it should be constructive, and it should be the truth. If it's biased and there's no truth in it, then I don't care about it. If it's true, it helps me grow.

Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place - that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.

Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.

Where would we be without inhibitions? They're quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.

A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.

It's like driving your car. If you drive too fast on the highway, you will topple, so you better maintain your speed. Life is similar to that, and that's the way you have to control your head.

You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.

If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

To become 'unique,' the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

I'm continuing to learn more about music - it's an ocean, and you can never really say that you know everything. I'm grateful that I'm still living and making music among the greats.

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out.

If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.

Some things are very low profile, but if they excite me creatively, I accept them. Sometimes there are high-profile projects, and you have to do it. We all have human limitations. It is a painful decision to turn things down. Even accepting 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a decision that I had to sacrifice another project.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.

I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

When you do something with a lot of honesty, appetite and commitment, the input reflects in the output.

You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.

I was famous from the age of 13, and after a while you become immune to it - in a good way. You look at positives and what you can do with it.

After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.

The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

Clark Gable seemed fascinating all his life because there wasn't so much information about him. Today, you're on television all the time.

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.

The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together.

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

The institution of marriage works better when there's a spiritual connection. If you're marrying just for the sake of the woman, then you may lose interest in each other very soon. When we marry in the interest of the Holy Spirit with the intention of serving God and humanity, then it gives a much larger perspective.

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person.

I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done. I try to make sure that I don't repeat my music.

So long as you do it truthfully, music is not to be judged.

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.

If someone tried to deprive you of your rights, you've got to resist it. You've got to resent it. You've got to fight against it.

You learn a lot about love before you ever get there. You learn at least as much about love from books as you do from watching your parents.