Analytical clarity is the result of hard, syllogistic thinking, and that thinking has to be done alone. It's not just being physically alone but also alone with your thoughts - not looking at your phone, not hearing the buzz of an incoming text message or email.
Most of my colleagues have been insulated in Indian music alone - they did not think of the world beyond what they knew - but I always did and still do.
When I was a young person I went to the university and I learned a rational language, to think with the left side of the brain. But in the right side of the brain you have intuition and imagination. Words are not the truth; they indicate the way to go, but you need to go alone, in silence. Symbols have a language that kills the words.
One of the fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law is that proper distinction should be made between military targets and civilians. That is why indiscriminate bombing, let alone the deliberate targeting of residential areas or agricultural infrastructure, is considered a war crime.
Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And he's almost indistinguishable now from the English language. I have no sense of what Shakespeare is like. I have no sense of the personality that is Shakespeare. I think, alone among writers, I don't know who he is.
In general, in more collectivist cultures, we see that in group settings, people dampen their emotions but are very expressive when they are at home alone. In more individualistic cultures, such as North America and Europe, it's the opposite - people are more expressive in group settings than when they are by themselves.
Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge.
I think the silences we have on some issues are inductive of the fact that we need to write about them more, but I think there are some issues you have to write in a sensitive way and in a way that respects the reality of the situation. If you can't do that, you should leave them alone.
The industrialization of China alone would increase by 90 percent the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and would at least increase the atmospheric CO2 by at least another 100 parts per million.
If a bacterium is trying to infect you, it won't secrete alone, because your immune system will block it. Bacteria will hide until they can all act together and make an impact.
Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.
Getting kids into the kitchen preparing the food they and their families will eat results in them viewing food in an entirely new way. If given the right ingredients, that act alone can raise the standards of the quality of the food both they and their family eat.
I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.
Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.
Being in this fine mood, I spoke to a little boy, whom I saw playing alone in the road, asking him what he was going to be when he grew up. Of course I expected to hear him say a sailor, a soldier, a hunter, or something else that seems heroic to childhood, and I was very much surprised when he answered innocently, 'A man.'
I liked Los Angeles for odd reasons. For one, there was no sense of community. You were really left to your own resources, spending this inordinate amount of time alone in a balloon of an automobile. I liked that a lot.
I don't know if this is because I'm a bit too old, but it is true that I'm getting insensible about romance recently. I'm very used to being alone now, and I don't think that's not half bad.
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
Sometimes I think I should have chosen a line of work where it was just me alone in the room, with the sun coming in, and God, insofar as he or she exists, smiling down upon me. Then I would have never been accused of being a tyrant, other than towards myself.
It was because of Henderson that I stayed... It was he and he alone who kept me in Toronto and in Canada. Were it not for Henderson, I believe insulin would have been a product of the United States.
