Quotes About Perspective

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future.

If you are a speechwriter, you have to know what the person you're writing for thinks. A lot of foreign policy advisers are thinking, 'How can I get my proposal into this guy's speech?' I was just thinking, 'What does he want to say?'

News-free existence is not a serious proposal, but it is worth noting that while today's 24/7 media environment is wonderful in many ways, it can also be like drinking out of a fire hose and intensify a downward reinforcing cycle of despair.

In all seriousness, I don't get people who need to make a proposal a bigger deal than marriage already is.

The whole idea is to propose an immersive experience. When you watch tennis, you watch from the outside, you're far from the court, the camera is far away and the whole story is about two persons hitting a tennis ball and trying to win.

There's pros and cons to everything, and I choose to look at the positives.

There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?

A poet or prose narrator usually looks back on what he has achieved against a backdrop of the years that have passed, generally finding that some of these achievements are acceptable, while others are less so.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor.

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.

The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.

I had prostate cancer. It was rather painful and, in many ways, life-changing.

With my earlier books, I got quite bored being with one protagonist all the way through. With the Alex Morrow books, I wanted to do something a bit more holistic, so there were lots of different points of view, and I wanted to look at aspects of crime that you don't tend to look at.

As you get older, you realize you're only the protagonist in your own story and a blip in someone else's life.

Every antagonist is a protagonist in his own right.

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

You don't need to like your protagonists.

I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.

I try to have something in common with my protagonists, especially when I'm writing in the first person.

Out of 10 projects I get sent, seven or eight are female protagonists, and that's not the only thing I'm interested in.

I'm kind of a dummy. I make movies and not realize until afterwards, 'Oh, I'm the protagonist.'