Organizations are accumulations of historical debris. They are not consciously thought. So when you ask the Education Ministry ‘What's your core function and who's your client?' they laugh at you. When I say that the client is the Afghan child - and the Ministry is an instrument, not the goal - it's greeted with shock. It's a new idea.
If you ask the question of Americans, should we pay our bills? One hundred percent would say yes. There's a significant misunderstanding on the debt ceiling. People think it's authorizing new spending. The debt ceiling doesn't authorize new spending; it allows us to pay obligations already incurred.
Raising the debt limit on some levels is a ministerial act. It doesn't involve any new spending.
We all shared an admiration of Debussy both as a musician and as sort of an icon for the 20th century. It seemed like an interesting idea to go right back 100 years to find the source of some new ideas now.
Debussy is one of the few composers who actually created a new sound on the piano - or perhaps we should say a new smell, so perfumed are the vibrations which emanate from the instrument.
Musically, 'Fallen' is a cross between 'Belus' and something new, inspired more by the debut album and 'Det Som Engang Var' than by 'Hvis Lyset Tar Oss' or 'Filosofem.'
I would say I live half in New York and half in Claridge's. How decadent! How hysterical!
When I look at cities now, I don't see them in the present. This is the decaying infrastructure of our existing cities. Years from now, none of this is going to be here. New cities are going to rise.
We pray that the deceitful race - such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ - be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.
I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?
Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too.
So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm.
What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place.
I don't want a lot of guys like me who played the game. Quite frankly, I want blank canvases; I want people to come in with new ideas. I don't want the biases of their own experiences to be a part of their decision-making process.
My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows I've hung bird feeders... for enticing different species. So I imagine I will be writing about that.
I've politely declined a few reality-type things but generally have been asked to do things that I'd enjoy. I'll be doing less in the new year so I can get some writing done.
Halloween is bigger than Christmas in America. I've experienced it in New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and if you're in the right neighbourhood, every house is decorated with spooky ghosts, spider webs, and jack-o-lanterns.
The whole scale and scope of the decorating and fashion business in this country are incomparably grander than in London. What's thrilling about America in general, and the New York fashion scene in particular, is its optimism. It makes the whole experience energizing and uplifting.
I write novels about women, except for one: 'Rococo', about a man, a New Jersey decorator. But even that book had a woman on the cover.
The Turkish, Arab and Chinese nationalists who built new nation-states out of the ruins of old empires scorned their old, decrepit rulers as much as they did the foreign imperialists who imposed free trade through gunboats.
