From A Bbc Interview Quotes & Sayings

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer. — Rita Dove

Call the Sabbath a delight: 13 a delight to the soul and a delight to the body. Since there are so many acts which one must abstain from doing on the seventh day, "you might think I have given you the Sabbath for your displeasure; I have surely given you the Sabbath for your pleasure." To sanctify the seventh day does not mean: Thou shalt mortify thyself, but, on the contrary: Thou shalt sanctify it with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy senses. "Sanctify the Sabbath by choice meals, by beautiful garments; delight your soul with pleasure and I will reward you for this very pleasure." 14 — Abraham Joshua Heschel

The crisis of European jurisprudence began a century ago with the victory of legal positivism. — Carl Schmitt

Even those novelists most commonly deemed "philosophical" have sometimes answered with an emphatic no. Iris Murdoch, the longtime Oxford philosopher and author of some two dozen novels treating highbrow themes like consciousness and morality, argued that philosophy and literature were contrary pursuits. Philosophy calls on the analytical mind to solve conceptual problems in an "austere, unselfish, candid" prose, she said in a BBC interview broadcast in 1978, while literature looks to the imagination to show us something "mysterious, ambiguous, particular" about the world. Any appearance of philosophical ideas in her own novels was an inconsequential reflection of what she happened to know. "If I knew about sailing ships I would put in sailing ships," she said. "And in a way, as a novelist, I would rather know about sailing ships than about philosophy. — Iris Murdoch

One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards. — Susan Cain

No one in Camden [Market] ever scoffed at me for looking too odd, but what I loved more was that no one ever scoffed at me for looking too normal, either. — Gabrielle Harbowy

Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others.
Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot.
ES: What, and don't make you talk?
AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person. — Andy Warhol

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it.
Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book — Colum McCann

Every time you go to see Hamlet you don't expect it to have a happy ending ... you're still enthralled.
(Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.) — Hilary Mantel

About Parlabane, Brookmyre says:
To fully acknowledge the extent of the debt I owe Douglas Adams - as a reader and a writer - would very possibly crash this server, so I will merely cite one significant example. I am frequently asked who was the inspiration for my investigative journalist Jack Parlabane; whether he has some real-life antecedent or represents some indulgent alter-ego of mine. The truth is that Parlabane was entirely inspired by Ford Prefect: I always adored the idea of a character who cheerfully wanders into enormously dangerous situations and effortlessly makes them much worse. — Christopher Brookmyre

several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant, and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening cooperation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission." An — Terry Pratchett

There's people that when they see Samuel Hamilton the first time might get the idea he's full of bull. He don't talk like other people. He's an Irishman. And he's all full of plans - a hundred plans a day. And he's all full of hope. — John Steinbeck

People hate the truth.
Luckily, the truth does not care. — Larry Winget

We had an apartment on west side of Central Park. The rent was very reasonable. We found out later that it belonged to a gangster called Legs Diamond and it was a front to his headquarters. It was fine. — James Stewart

No one who has ever done anything really great or successful has ever done it simply because he was attracted by what we call a 'reward' or by the fear of what we call a 'punishment.' — Maria Montessori