Quotes About Perspective

With COVID-19, I didn't have many symptoms luckily, so I think it's OK.

In fact, it is more interesting to play someone whose politics is not in sync with my own politics because then I have to understand a different kind of mind and that becomes more interesting as an actor.

I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.

I'm a middle child, so I have middle-child syndrome. With a middle child, you always have to take in everything and adjust and maybe compromise a little bit so you're able to see both sides of an issue. I'm also a Leo - I love astrology - so that affected me, just being a lion.

I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to see the world in the same way that most people I know see it. They don't seem to be baffled by it.

Once you have a Down's syndrome child, you can't conform. In a way, you're free.

I have American friends in France, and when I meet with them, they tell me about everything that is wrong with France. I think there is a general expat syndrome, which means that whatever country you are in, you are always missing your own country and always thinking that the country you live in is actually not as good as it could be.

I so hate the term Bollywood. I know it's become synonymous with the industry but really we are 'Indian cinema.'

As historians write more and more histories, it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that other historians read their histories and then make synthesis, and certain things just get forgotten and left out and neglected.

To me, I don't see any difference between a synthesizer and an acoustic instrument. It's what's done on it that counts.

People shouldn't knock the synthesizer. It's an aid, and it depends on how you use it, just like any other instrument.

Very few people are fortunate enough to walk through countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and I had seen them all. I had spoken to many on the street.

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

In our education system, we're so focused on the building blocks that sometimes we try to keep the kids from looking at the larger picture.

I don't think I'm always right, but I would like to empower people to come to sound conclusions using a systematic way of looking at things.

From a legal perspective, the barriers to women's economic success is systemic.

Sometimes there is no sugar-coating it. Sometimes you have to challenge people's belief systems in a progressive way.

Another thing I noticed as the children wrote was how often they changed their viewing perspectives. A child rarely looks at his world straight on. He lies flat on his back in the middle of a field, or peeks out from a hiding place, or climbs a tree and watches the scene from above.

Being absolutely sure that one is right is part of growing up, and so is realizing, years later, that the truth might be more nuanced.

Eliot was scornful of idle women readers who imagined themselves the heroines of French novels, and of self-regarding folk who saw themselves in the most admirable character in a novel, and she hoped for more nuanced engagement from her own readers. Even so, all readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience.

A book may not tell us exactly how to live our own lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book.

That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.

Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.

Common sense is just a name for the way we're used to thinking.