Quotes on Us

I believe we create our own lives. And we create it by our thinking, feeling patterns in our belief system. I think we're all born with this huge canvas in front of us and the paintbrushes and the paint, and we choose what to put on this canvas.

For us, driving is not what we are looking for, but being in the driver's seat of our only destiny. That means ending guardianship in Saudi Arabia, which means recognizing women as full citizens.

How Americans restore trust may be an existential question for their country, then, but it's ultimately a practical one: What U.S. society needs to answer it in the coming years aren't lamentations but practical measures, especially among the emerging generations that will define America's future.

So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.

Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory.

I always say I write because I have questions, not because I have answers. It's true that you begin the conversation - that's the role of the artist. But it's not my job to tell us what to do next. I wish I had those tools.

People expect things from art that are horrible for us who make it! They put the things we make in these restrictive places called 'museums,' then don't want to hear another word from us.

I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.

People come to the stadium to forget their lives for 90 minutes, and it's up to us to give them satisfaction; to get them out of their chairs and to fall asleep with stars in their eyes.

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.

I believe that some of us who were kept by God a long while before we found Him love Him better perhaps than we should have done if we had received Him directly, and we can preach better to others - we can speak more of His loving-kindness and tender mercy.

If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'

The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders.

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.

My mom was paralyzed from polio at the age of 2, abandoned by her husband, left with a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old, and so, we were raising her as much as she was raising us.

I'm worried that the audience is being conditioned. That's my real fear. Because if they don't want to see wrinkles on the screen, if they actually fear looking at them, then it's only going to get worse. Those of us who don't want to shoot up and cut and sew, we're just not going be cast.

For those of us in the opposition movement under dictatorships, part of our job is confronting police and spending time in prison. So, a dissident not only needs to learn how to oppose oppression but also how to face the crackdowns and time in prison.

I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.

We're never going to come to a moment where all of us who claim to be feminists can agree about what the first priority of feminism is.

We are not just bundles of atoms being pushed around. But, there's something spiritual about us whether we give that a religious interpretation or not. And so, it's that sense of there being dignity to life that I associate with the word God. I mean, that's probably a pretty radical and agnostic way of interpreting it. But, that's what I think.