Quotes About Perspective

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.

If you're broke and you're living on the street and you're happy, you're still winning compared to someone who is rich and depressed, because your mental wellbeing is still there.

Words matter. I encourage everyone to consider the meaning of their words from another person's point of view, as well as the consequences of how our own words can impact the wellbeing of others.

Health and wellness does mean different things to different people.

Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.

I think it's unfair to criticise someone for not being Welsh, but the smaller the nation, the more patriotic you seem to be.

My grandfather was a Welsh dock-worker who voted Tory. Some of my friends are investment bankers who have voted Labour. It takes all sorts, and the best Tory values appeal to all sorts.

So many different countries have got their version of what Merlin is: the Scottish say he Scottish, the Welsh say he's Welsh, the French say he's French.

Growing up in Wales, there was a lot of fervour about being Welsh. But the more that I travelled, I realised that people aren't always interested in where you're from, but who you are.

I see myself as a different sort of Welsh. Because we are from Cardiff, we see Wales as Cardiff. This is Wales; outside Cardiff is beyond. It's a strange one. You are really Welsh, but you're not, if you know what I mean.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.

Things ain't what they used to be and never were.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there's gonna come a time that you're gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

The living werewolves have genuine needs and desires, which, though they may oppose ours, are valid. Even if they want to eat humans, you can't really call them evil, any more than mice can call cats evil, or chickens can call humans evil. It's all just a matter of where you're standing.

We must take positions. Our weakness in the West is born of the fact of so-called 'objectivity.' Objectivity does not exist - it cannot exist!... The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only.

In a compass, we got north, south, east and west, right? But in between that, you got things like north-east - now that, to me, is where real life is. Everybody's life is not straight: it's often 30 degrees to your left, or in the hardest part of the reach.

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.

We tend to forget in the West that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.

I acknowledge the four elements. Water in the North; incense to recognize the air in the East; flowers for the earth in the South; a candle for light from the West. It helps me keep perspective.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.