All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
I think that it's very important to have the United States' engagement in many situations we have around the world, be it in Syria, be it in the African context. The United States represents an important set of values, human rights, values related to freedom, to democracy. And so the foreign policy engagement of the United States is a very important guarantee that those values can be properly pursued.
The past shouldn't be forgotten. It should be used as a guide for future situations and not used as a reason to avoid making difficult decisions. There was always a choice.
I think we all spend, sometimes, more time at our jobs than we do at home, and there are people that we wouldn't necessarily choose to spend so much time with. So those irritations and those, just those situations I think are really relatable.
Myths are wonderful tools that we've had, oh, for eons now that help us navigate the situations we find ourselves in.
I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.
The UN was very media-shy, and its relationship with the press was very controlled; although periodically I spoke to the press, the rule was, only the secretary-general speaks to the press; only the secretary-general makes. . . So you would see many situations where under-secretaries-general would come in and speak. I opened that, and I encouraged all of them to speak in their areas, whether it was peacekeeping or humanitarian efforts.
Sometimes we stand to learn the most about God from the situations we understand the least.
I think the most honest responses to the movies you get to watch are in houses and people's most private spaces, like the bedroom or in your own intimate space. I think that's where you feel safest, so when you're threatened in the place you feel safest, it makes for the scariest situations.
Don't let anything or anyone define you. You are what you are because of what you make of tough situations in your life.
Humor is essential to a full and happy life. It is a reliever and relaxer of pressure and tension, and the saving element in many situations.
We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.
It's better to have a good player with the basketball in late game situations than to have plays.
It is a major sin to break a contract, especially in military situations.
You never know what even the bad situations will lead to, which I guess is true with anything in life.
When I'm not the Tiger Mom, I'm a professor at Yale Law School, and if one thing is clear to me from years of teaching, it's that there are many ways to produce fabulous kids. I have amazing students; some of them have strict parents, others have lenient parents, and many come from family situations that defy easy description.
A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.
What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.
Everybody isn't your friend. Just because they hang around you and laugh with you doesn't mean they're for you. Just because they say they got got your back, doesn't mean they won't stab you in it. People pretend well. Jealousy sometimes doesn't live far. So know your circle. At the end of the day real situations expose fake people so pay attention.
I keep a couple of notebooks too into which I record ideas for story titles or characters or situations, and these notes help me quite a bit when I'm feeling at loose ends and not sure of what to work on next.