Alison Quotes

Just as a random thing, because I can't choose a favorite song ever, I'll go for Minnie Riperton's "Expecting".

There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing.

You don't get bored making an album.

I think making an album is a difficult thing.

It is also important to understand that a hidden nature is not always an evil nature

Too many doubts grow in the cracks of silence and separation.

His Majesty has always been a powerful man. Perhaps he has never had to distinguish between the two.

A man who lifts his chin in pride will fail to see the chasm at his feet.

You have seen me at my worst and at my weakest. Let me show you my best.

Don't ask any questions and you won't hear any lies.

History does not care about the suffering of the individual. Only the outcome of their struggles. -P 462 Master Tozay to Eona

It is not often that the real world conjures worse than what we can imagine.

Don't say anything. Just act cool," I whispered. Mavkel started to shiver. "Like this?" it asked. "No, I mean act calm." Mavkel stopped shivering.

Owning our past allows us to own our future.

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.

Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.

Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.

One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.

Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape.

To support the people we care about is intrinsic, it is not instrumental. It's not something we do because we're hoping to get some other outcome.

We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.

Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!

The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.

If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.

Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Writers want recognition, audience, some corroboration that all those hours at the desk and in daydreams add up to something in the esteem of others.

I'm just really interested in the interface of the individual with the collective. I think that's where the arts live.

The countries that are the least responsible for causing climate change are paying the heaviest price.

I'm filled with despair. We live in a pathological culture filled with rage and bitterness and greed. The hate-mongering and racism is reaching a frightening pitch.

Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.

I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

Poetry is one of the most full ways of discovering what it feels like to be a human being in this particular moment, in this particular set of concerns. It's all about discovery.

I'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way.

One needs to be on guard against expecting external powers to decide when you can take yourself seriously as an artist. It can be a long wait - and lead to endless appetite.

I like to joke that I started writing long poems out the anxiety over ending and starting poems. It just seemed easier to keep going.

I like the dance between sustained focus and digression that the long poem invites. A controlling metaphor helps to sustain the long poem.

When we're writing anything, we're bearing witness to the time we live in and how it's different from any other time in history.

For me teaching has provided community and livelihood and the satisfaction of passing along what I've learned to others.

I'm really interested in culture because it is such a powerful human force, particularly in America where we think it's all about the individual.

Sometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence.

I like bringing poetry's focus on figurative language and compression into the essay. Of course, the musical properties of language, the cadence of the sentence, are really important to me in prose.

I'm always trying to bring as many poetic properties as possible to the essay without making it too overburdened.

I came to teaching late - not until my forties - which is one reason why I'm not burned out.

What I like about teaching is the discipline of finding words to unpack the artistic process. And I admire the drive in students who want to write, the mystery of how artistic talent unfolds.