Thinking

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do, with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.

I pray to God I get inside a girl's head one day and see what in the WORLD they are thinking.

Thinking back on it, I've been in this business since I was 3, and I grew up in musical theater, so I was raised and surrounded by gay men and gay women. I was hardly around anyone straight.

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

There are hundreds of books about Woodrow Wilson, but I have an image of him in my mind that is unlike any picture I have seen anywhere else, based on material at Princeton and 35 years of researching and thinking about him.

There's a huge part of me that's thinking about perfection. I have to fight that urge, to try to live in the moment, reach for something that I might be hearing, and not second-guess myself.

I remember in high school thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I realize I saw that movie 'And Justice for All' when I was a kid and thought, 'That's what lawyers do, and I want to get up and yell and scream in the middle of a courtroom.'

My parents took me to see plays, starting from when I was very little. Oftentimes, I was too young to understand. I don't know what my parents were thinking - 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' when I was eight years old, that kind of thing. So lots of times, I didn't understand what was going on, but I just loved the sound of dialogue.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

Something I've noticed as I get older is that I do think about the future more. It's all positive thinking.

I was rather foolish in saying that I did not like arithmetic and to learn figures when I did - I was not thinking quite what I was about. The sums can be done better, if I tried, than they are.

The good part is if I play a solid round of golf, it will be very hard for the others to beat me. And that's all I'm thinking about.

I'm constantly thinking about the role, and there's an infinite amount of questions you can ask yourself about a character to the point that it's hard to find the boundaries of when to not work.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

Can anything good come of a backward way of thinking like judging someone based on skin color? No way.

France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.

People make the mistake of thinking they've got to perform just because someone has said something about their potential.

You don't want people thinking you're a cheat just because you're really fast and have broken the world record by a second.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

I wasn't a kid growing up thinking, 'One day I'll get an Oscar and make a speech.' That wasn't on my mind.

Deadlines refine the mind. They remove variables like exotic materials and processes that take too long. The closer the deadline, the more likely you'll start thinking waaay outside the box.

I always have to be thinking about who's going to be singing this song, what the context is. I don't sit around just writing in a vacuum, ever.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

I remember vividly one distinct memory of arriving in Hong Kong and being the only blonde haired girl in this sea of international students, and thinking, 'Oh, my God. There's no hiding here.'

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.

The traits the word 'childish' addresses are seen so often in adults that we should abolish this age-discriminatory word when it comes to criticizing behavior associated with irresponsibility and irrational thinking.

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.

When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, 'This is my vision.'

When you're young, you say it how it is, and even your views are, like, 'This is totally the truth', 'cos you don't know any difference, so there's a real confidence in your way of thinking.

I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they're just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.

I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.

I love the idea of numerology, but I don't really believe in it. But I like thinking about what numbers convey.

I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making it. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music.

The camera is interested in what you are thinking as opposed to just what you are doing or saying.

I wanted to study painting and become a painter, but I had a huge flip-over in my life when I was about 18 or 19. I was part of a criminal environment, I got arrested and convicted, and I had to start thinking in a new way.

There is a dearth of thinking skills - people are taught what to think, not how.

As I stood and gave the eulogy for young Michael Brown last week, I kept thinking about the fact that this child should have been in college instead of laying in a coffin.

Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you'll be watching TV, and it'll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you'll actually find yourself thinking, 'I don't want to hear about this train being derailed! What happened to 'The Flintstones?'

I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This is a sign, I've come to think, of a kind of emotional disturbance - a reaction to inner fragility. I wish I were more able to just act and do, rather than constantly have to retreat and examine and think.

When I'm writing, I write all day. Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies, and I like that.

I'm anti-globalisation. There is nothing more enriching than to go out into the world and meet people different to you. We must fight the spread of a singular way of thinking and preserve cultural differences.

When does she do all this thinking? We're together all the time but she thinks deeply about things and with feeling and she can remember the facts. We've been married 48 years.

I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

You can't think about terrorism without thinking about Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians began international terrorism. It started with them in 1968. They used it as the first resort, not the last resort. They invented it, they perfected it, they benefited from it and they taught the world how to use it and that it would be successful.

I get so engaged when I have a problem you cannot solve that I just cannot break away from what I am doing - I keep thinking and thinking and cannot stop.

Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.

Social thinking requires very exacting thresholds to be powerful. For example, we've had social thinking for 200,000 years, and hardly anything happened that could be considered progress over most of that time. This is because what is most pervasive about social thinking is 'how to get along and mutually cope.'

I have three tools at my disposal - my whistle, my body language and my talk. It is a question of how I marry them up to try to get the players around to my way of thinking.

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

It's not my job to tell people what to think. If I can actually in some way help the readers' own creative thinking, then that's got to be to everybody's benefit.

I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.

Youngsters have got to stop thinking about becoming the next Zuckerberg. It's a trillion-to-one chance. What they need is mater and pater to say, 'Get a job, son.'

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

It's funny because looking back at my first contest, I was 15 and surfing the Haleiwa contest wearing this tiny bikini. I remember not even thinking twice about wearing it - I just thought it was normal.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

I was thinking about vampires and, specifically, about what makes vampires a romantic trope: about what people like about not just vampires but supernaturally long-lived creatures in general, which is a thing that shows up in probably fifty to sixty percent of paranormal romances... And then, for some reason, I decided to reverse it.

I come from the place where I am thinking 'I have put my blood on the pages.'

This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she's limping, and she's still living, but she doesn't look at me like she knows. She's not thinking what I'm thinking. It's a cruel trick that we all know the ending.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.

To be bowed by grief is folly, Naught is gained by melancholy, Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking.

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

'The Apprentice' was a huge success, and Trump was a huge television star who managed to trick people into thinking he was the guy from the show.

There's less critical thinking going on in this country on a Main Street level - forget about the media - than ever before. We've never needed people to think more critically than now, and they've taken a big nap.

If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.

When I'm working, I'm insufferable because I get stuck with myself, and suddenly I become obsessive, thinking about how to make something better.

Being essentially a creator, I never set out to shock, always thinking about creating my work and not about the benefits it could produce.

Even though New York may be a more inspiring city, I get more inspired thinking of L.A., in a way. My life there was so much more simple in mind, and quiet.

I started off as an actor thinking that I would be this Romeo, this dashing leading man. It turns out that I'm a character actor.

I think that my music is really empowering. I just want people to know - especially young people, but really everyone - that you don't have to be so caught up in what everyone else is thinking. You don't have to be the coolest, most popular person. You can just be you and be vulnerable.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

I'm not thinking about anything when I'm climbing, which is part of the appeal. I'm focused on executing what's in front of me.

We already have many of the technologies and tools that we need to build a sustainable future. What we don't have is a new way of thinking, and that's really the hardest part.

I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it?

I don't spend any time whatsoever thinking about what might have been.

Sometimes, writing songs is like waiting in for deliveries. They give you a window, and your washing machine is going to show up, whether the window is the album or something you're thinking, like, 'This thing is going to come to me.'

There's nothing worse than having everybody thinking alike, talking alike and having the same direction in mind. It gets stale that way.

I think movies are good for getting into dream states or exploring weird alternate states of thinking.

With Fever, the film was so made for the screen, and there's so much surround sound that was done for the film - enormous detail paid to that. I wasn't thinking video, because I didn't know how it was going to turn out.

There is no single way to train, or do anything well. You have to keep thinking, keep doing things.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth.

I went into academia thinking that there'd be constant reciprocity between my scholarship and my creative work but found that doing one always turned my mind into the sort of tool that was badly suited to doing the other.

These days, there are times when my academic thinking intervenes in my writing, but it's usually while I'm developing a project and not while I'm writing it.

He was thinking alone, and seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when some one tapped gently at his door.

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

There was a huge lack of freedom in communist regimes, but at least they had humanity at the center of their thinking.

I got told by pretty much everyone I knew that, if I'm going to be out in L.A., working, you need a car. So I was thinking, I'm going to try and not get a car, just because I'm a contrarian that way.

There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life, to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

My brother and my dad always used to shave their hair, and I remember thinking, 'Why can't I do the same?'

When I'm drumming, I'm not thinking about much.

There are so many of these young-adult movies with these cold guys who act like jerks to girls but are hiding soft sentiments. But in the real world most guys who act like jerks are jerks. Generally they are. I spent a lot of high school thinking that horrible guys must be very sensitive and interesting and it's not true.

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

For years, I didn't give interviews because I was scared of people judging me or thinking I was arrogant.

Confidence in a bloke would be arrogance in a woman. For years, I didn't give interviews because I was scared of people judging me or thinking I was arrogant.

I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they're thinking and who they are and who's hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what's the story, really?

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

If you just, pretty much, take a random 15-month-old, just sit and watch them for 10 minutes and count out how many experiments, how much thinking you see going on, and it will put the most brilliant scientist to shame.

A lot of people who look at my photographs think it is an easy joke, but it does take a bit of thinking about.

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

Painting is almost like a sport. It's like this action thing. When I do it, I'm really not thinking. The paintings are like a diary that I might not want to read again.

When you're recording in the midst of touring, you get a different sense about you. Things are more rocking, darker, heavier and louder. You're thinking about the audience that you're seeing every night.

Instead of thinking that's a nice tune, you start thinking is it the right pace, is it the right tempo? That is the death nell for artists.

The lesson that any thinking person draws from the Stewart saga is that when the government asks questions, run for your lawyer and don't say a word. Had Stewart kept her mouth shut, she'd be OK.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.

Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.

He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!

The chances of a reunion now are less likely. I was thinking of having a 40th anniversary of the band, but now they are really another band, so it's all a bit weird.

Everyone is like, 'What were you thinking on the podium?' I'm like, I'm just like probably thinking, like, 'We're hungry,' to be honest.

I'm just thinking about being the best I can be for the team first because that's what comes first.

It's either feast or famine, and that's the way it's been for as long as I can remember. I've spent my whole career thinking I'll never work again. Every actor lives with that insecurity. You just have to negotiate the rapids as they come.

My own personal connection with God was not in a religious sense, so I wasn't really thinking in that way when I got the role and when I started doing it.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'

If you represent a fantasy for the people who actually go to the cinema, they grab that and go with it, therefore, for the rest of their lives, they actually identify you with a certain thinking - a certain philosophy. There are many actors who want to pursue that same thought in real life as well, and that's perfectly acceptable.

No new projects at the moment. There are restrictions to how much I can take on. And I need to finish those that I am committed to do before thinking ahead. But I'd rather they take final shape before we talk of them.

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.

I had to pinch myself. I got the call and didn't expect it. And right up 'til nearly the end of filming, I was thinking, 'Am I actually doing a film with Akshay Kumar?' because I was a massive Akshay Kumar fan before, and the first film that I ever watched was his and Katrina's film, 'Namastey London.'

Some people get in the way of change happening. Some people spend their whole careers thinking they can make a difference. Other people want to do as little as possible to get the day done.

I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking, 'I really want to write a novel.'

Life's short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

I've been thinking about going back to university. I need more tools to continue to apply to the music. I've got to open myself up to more language.

I am thinking about chess in schools in particular. In the USA more than 3200 children competed in an event.

That's the thing about suicide. Try as you might to remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.

If you're doing black music, you should have a core understanding of where that comes from, and the fundamentals - so you're not some bozo thinking you're doing something new.

When people are thinking, we are quite inventive animals.

Money isn't everything, but it is when you start thinking about putting money away for your retirement days.

What's that show? 'TMZ'? They stand there and say, 'I've got this on this person.' The focus on celebrities can be detrimental because people could be thinking of other things, but it's a part of the culture and it's what sells.

I feel like I'm part of history being made. I leave Apple board meetings thinking, 'I've got to do a better job.'

When I was little, I would always try and look into the television screen along the sides. I kept thinking if you looked in there, you could see what was happening off camera.

What if we all suddenly get carried away thinking - who will be left to act?

When you've nothing to live for, you get to thinking inside your head.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose, high-lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense, but I thought that was my problem.

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.

Plan for each episode to be a satisfying experience, but still leave the audience thinking, 'Oh, my God! Now what?'

Taking the time to polish a pun or fine-tune a practical joke is a way of saying, 'I'm thinking about you and I want to please you.'

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

You don't come into government thinking it is going to be easy.

Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.

In doing everything, from coming up with the ideas and putting them on paper till doing the final edits, you are always thinking the next three steps, you're always thinking what next, what next, what next?

If I were to die thinking that I'd written three poems that people might read after me, I would feel that I hadn't lived in vain. Great poets might expect the whole body of their work, but most of us - well, I would settle for a handful.

Canadians need to start thinking of themselves as a petrostate, and they need to start thinking of the kinds of controls needed to protect the country from the excesses of oil.

I mean, frankly, I'm not speaking as a representative of Disney or Pixar, I'm speaking as just myself as a filmmaker: I don't go into anything that often thinking about a sequel.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.

When I was a child, it was my dream to be a professional footballer. When I was 14 I visited Milan's San Siro stadium and remember thinking how unbelievable it was. From then onwards I vowed that one day I would be playing there - and I am very proud that I achieved this and also for everything else I have managed to achieve in football.

Scotty heard that I was thinking about quitting Apple because of his actions, so he called me into his office and asked what it would take for me to stay? I said, maybe if I could work on the Mac project, which Steve had just taken over from Jef Raskin.

Why did God have to make Mo'Nique a good actress? What was God thinking when he decided to give Mo'Nique acting chops. Now we have to endure Mo'Nique comedy specials.

A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.

I remember kind of doing early acting and thinking, 'God, they don't paint behind the sets.' It's a bit of a shame, really - 'Oh, what's on the other side of this wall? Oh, you can see the plywood.' I was really disappointed. I just thought that these things were real, from watching things as a kid.

I remember watching 'A Streetcar Named Desire' when I was quite young, I was about 12, or 13, and I watched it, thinking, 'Wow. That is pretty cool. I'd like to do something like that.'

Thinking back to those earlier days, I felt I was weak when I wasn't making movies, and then when I was, I thought I was weak as a family member.

Well, like most black Americans, I grew up thinking I was supposed to be a Democrat. It wasn't even something you questioned or thought twice about. Black equaled Democrat.

I think the political class in Berlin doesn't need to be supervised and monitored by intelligence services in order to find out what they're thinking. Just go to lunch with them, go to dinner with them, or read the papers.

Every day of my life, I feel fat. It's not correct thinking in the natural, normal human being's way of life.

Everyone starts a film thinking that it would be a big hit. But sometimes it goes haywire.

Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better.

I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships. If it isn't about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble.

Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

Harassment is the background radiation of my life. It is a factor in every decision I make. Any time I tweet something or make a post, I'm always thinking about it.

Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking.

This planet seems to be in such sorry shape. And I can't ever think about the rest of the universe without coming back home and thinking what the implications for life here would be if we were to really have some definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.

If you've ever had a brush with cancer, you're always thinking a pain might be something serious.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written 'fanfic' - stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I've written is incredible.

You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.

Right now I'm just thinking about school and trying to get those grades and keep them up! In case I become a Norma Desmond when I grow up, I can have something to fall back on!

I learned how to cook by making soups, so I was thinking of how to make the most eco-friendly and green way to make soup. Obviously, using water and vegetables from your garden is the most sustainable way.

I like figuring out where I need to be mentally so that I'm not thinking about the camera and that it's second nature. I want to get to a place where I can exist within the confines of what you can do with filmmaking and not have to think about it.

I'm constantly playing this game in my head where I'm thinking, 'Can this quote be pared down and misinterpreted?' It doesn't matter what outlet I'm talking to and how comprehensive the interview is, because I have to think in terms of, 'Right, but 'People' magazine could just take this one quote and take it out of context.'

To not be self-conscious of your appearance is huge, and something that I desperately hope to carry into film at some point in my useless life - to not be thinking, 'My ear looks weird from this angle, why is the camera over there?'

Because of reality television and all these celebrities thinking they can be designers, everyone imagines that they can just become a designer, photographer, or model, but that's not the way things work. People have to go to school, learn their craft, and build a brand - that's the right, healthy way to do things.

There isn't any one material that's mine. It all depends on the context. For example, I did a house that had the most exquisite marble applications. That sounds ostentatious, but it wasn't, given the context. The color white I subscribe to extensively. I love thinking about color, but I often go with white.

I have been guilty of wrong thinking.

Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.