Quotes About Relevance

Take Jonathan Franzen's work: it's just old wine in new bottles. They say he's the Tolstoy of the digital age, but there can only be a Tolstoy of the Tolstoyan age.

There are loads of kids out there who haven't got a clue what 'Men Behaving Badly' was; it was such a long time ago. So I'm able to spread my wings a little bit more. I was able to do it on stage over the years. Most directors and producers don't know who I am these days, anyway!

Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today.

Nobody gives a damn about the Merrimac. You know how it is. Winners write the history books.

I honestly think that with every song you release you have to keep winning your own fans over again.

I did my first interview in 1995 and was asked about my private life. I said, 'Why would I tell you? I don't see the logic in anyone knowing that about me. For whose sake? Nobody wins.'

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

Hidden in a long text, there are perhaps three lines that count.

I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.

The Bible is not an antiquated text. The scriptures are the text that will lead us into the future.

Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship.

I just started to put texting and phones in my books. I want my books to be read 20 years from now; I don't want them to be dated.

Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.

When I grew up in America, I didn't see anyone who looked like me on TV. I feel overwhelmed with the things that people have said to me. When I meet Indian Americans who've lived here all their lives, it's overwhelming people holding me and crying. Someone said to me, 'Thank you for making us relevant.' It's such a big thing.

I'd always avoided stuff like 'Where are they now?' or 'Whatever happened to?' Just 'No thanks, thanks for calling.' You tell me, have you ever seen a 'Whatever happened to' where they seemed anything but pathetic?

I don't want to be an old man in a pub singing about Margaret Thatcher.

Just as strong Labour supporters in the 1980s could not come to terms with the fact that most people did not hate Mrs Thatcher, so many of my closest Conservative friends find it difficult to believe that the messages and style of the past don't work any longer.

The first thing you have to do is make sure you're still wanted back. I never take that for granted any more.

I think for a woman, the hardest thing about growing old is becoming invisible. There's something very front and center about being young.

Who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one.

There seems to be an interest in connecting the history of the past to the present and asking whether things have really changed. Films like 'The Contender' and 'Bulworth' seem quaint compared with Trump!

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.

The one thing we need to do to continue to maintain Test cricket as being special is cutting down the amount and make it a real occasion rather than playing one after another.