I didn't think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody - I didn't think it described me very well and I didn't think it had anything to do with my music.

The problem for me still today is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

In essence String Theory describes space and time matter and energy gravity and light indeed all of God's creation... as music.

Unfortunately 'chick flick' has become a term to describe most movies that I don't even like. They're these movies that yes have women in them but they really don't reflect who women are and there's something kind of silly or shallow or gossipy about them.

It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway Van Gogh... Robert Schumann has been mentioned... Virginia Woolf Sylvia Plath... some of them with rather grim ends.

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house the marriage and sometimes what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half and the rest doesn't get done.

Having Down syndrome is like being born normal. I am just like you and you are just like me. We are all born in different ways that is the way I can describe it. I have a normal life.

Literature adds to reality it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides and in this respect it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

It's not a matter of if economies around the world becoming low-carbon but when and how: through struggle and strife or through advancement and progressive leadership. Larry Elliot described it today as the 'Green New Deal.' It's a leadership we in Britain can provide and from which our economy can benefit.

To remove this obstacle I repeat or refer to such knowledge as has come under my notice my own previously expressed views and also describe and exhibit my last experiments and explain their novelty and utility.

Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed he explained so he did not weep.

I don't think I would describe my sense of humor. Doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do.

I would describe myself as emotional and highly strung. If something upsets me it really upsets me. If something makes me angry I get really angry. But it's all very upfront. I can't hide it. I'm also loyal and I hope I'm fun.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

You speak of Lord Byron and me there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

A battle lost or won is easily described understood and appreciated but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection as well as observation to appreciate it.