The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement.
I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.
Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.
While I enjoy it, I will continue to go onstage. While I contribute something, fine. I don't want to be dragging my feet. I don't want to become pathetic, but I think I will be lucid enough. I'll know when to stop.
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
Take it from a guy: If you're in love with somebody, you will swim the stream, you will climb the mountain, you will slay the dragon. You're going to get to her somehow, some way.
When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.
When you are too specific on a target, it can drain you. Ask me where I will be when I am 60, and I will have no answer to give.
Ever crack an egg into simmering water only to watch the white spread out and form wispy tentacles? It happened to me until I came across this game-changing fix: Break the egg into a sieve set over a bowl. The watery outer edge of the white will drain through, leaving the thicker white and yolk intact.
This will result in wells that will make a substantial improvement in the recovery factor just because they are absolutely in the proper place within the reservoir for the purposes of drainage.
Having been an oncologist and having cared for scores, if not hundreds, of dying patients, when you don't have a treatment that can shrink the tumor and the patient will die, it's a very difficult conversation. It's emotionally draining.
Being a parent gives you historical perspective. You have thoughts about how you fit into a larger generational drama - those who came before and those who will come after.
If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.
Deep down, I'm a small-town girl who has it drilled in her DNA to grow up, marry, have kids, settle down. Maybe I will knock the same theory in my kids' heads, too. I'm also liberal, a political enthusiast, a bookworm, and the least bit ambitious to pull off a soap drama queen act.
I have been a proponent of dramatically expanding the AmeriCorps program. By increasing the pay of participants to a living wage, it can act as a jobs program that, rather than trying to predict what will be technically viable jobs, will value social support and provide jobs that make communities stronger.
I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation.
Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
Failure to curb temperature increases will impact all countries, Ireland included, but with the most immediate and drastic effects being felt, in many instances, by the most vulnerable countries and communities.
Unless technology itself is drastically repressed, the idea of the dystopian monoculture like Orwell's 1984 gets harder to believe. But the danger of a solipsistic society will grow, of a disconnected society of mirror-watchers and navel-gazers.
