Quotes

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that's the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don't understand.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I'm not sure it's the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

In many ways, I've been writing personal stories all my life.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don't think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

I don't think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I'm enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

I think, often, people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it's always a good deal different than you expect it.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I've got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English.

I am always talking to students and telling them how you have to practice every day because you can't wait for someone to hire you. You need something you do for yourself, something that feeds your creative life.

When it comes to your creative life and what it's going to take, you will do a disservice to everybody if you just dabble.

When you're an actor, you do get involved with your characters - your emotional life is tied up with theirs, and so is your physical life.

As long as a tune has the power to move me, I'm a lifelong fan.

Making music has saved my life.

Parents are destined to sin against their kids; it's inevitable. As is narcissism and the human condition. Everyone has their ego and their ambitions. Life happens in between.

The road's a tough life, but I said 'yes,' because as a kid growing up in Ohio, I never had a chance to see a Tony-winning actress in a role she won the Tony for.

The science of being healthy is well-known. It is not esoteric. There are no magic bullets. If you want to live a long life, we've known the answers for more than a hundred years. It's a wide-ranging diet with as much fruit and veg as you can stuff into yourself, and plenty of exercise. It doesn't even matter what kind of exercise.

Around 4000BC, the Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer way of life here gave way to a more settled, farming existence. Those Neolithic people built wooden trackways across the salt marshes and reed beds.

I find humanism to be the most rational and positive philosophy for life. And it's not a new thing at all - the history of humanist thought is deep and inspiring.

I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't.

I try to take care of myself, and I lead a healthy lifestyle.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it's a good place that we're all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.