Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.
Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here’s my theory: you’re facing backwards, so you’re looking at the people you’re beating – and there’s something exquisite about that.
I personally believe that the iPod is a frankly corrosive device because it encourages you to surround yourself with your favorites. The whole idea of a playlist is to surround yourself with your favorite things, and the interesting thing is that when you do that, they cease to be your favorites.
Now, my mom always said two wrongs don’t make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.
I admit I can’t shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.
I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.
It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.
The only good thing I’ve ever noticed about money, the only positive aspect of an otherwise pretty vulgar commodity, is that you can use it to buy things.
Keep on being yourself.
I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think – I don’t just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it.
I wouldn’t be able to act like Al Pacino or play the piano like Dr. John, But I could probably act better than Dr. John and play the piano better than Al Pacino.
Newton’s Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I’d turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.
My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven’t fallen since.
They, all of them, work incredibly hard to make me seem clever and heroic, neither of which I am.
I think classical music tuition is, well, was when I was a child, was an abomination. I think in some ways it is one of life’s great tragedies for everybody who gives up an instrument.
One thing House needs Wilson for is vanity. He needs someone to laugh at his jokes.
Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive.
I run six-to-eight miles a day, plus weights and aerobics in the lunch hour. I also lie a lot, which keeps me thin.
I hate menus, I hate choosing food. I just want to be brought. Bring me dinner!
This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.