Even if the Moon didn’t exist – even if it had been vaporized billions of years ago by cantankerous Klingons – there would still be (somewhat lower) tides raised by the Sun. For creatures dependent on the oceans’ ebb and flow, life could go on.
As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.
Central to living a life that is good is a life that’s forgiving. We’re creatures of contact, regardless of whether we kiss or we wound.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of those odd moth-like creatures who seem to combine extreme discomfort with the spotlight with an unstoppable compulsion to leap into it.
It’s a joke to think that anyone is one thing. We’re all such complex creatures. But if I’m going to be a poster child for anything, anger’s a gorgeous emotion. It gets a bad rap, but it can make great changes happen.
Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.
Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn’t feel like a freak.
We both can be the most beautiful and benevolent creatures on the planet, but then there’s another side that can be as harsh and as ugly as the darkest thing you could imagine seeing.
I use femaleness as another lens, so I don’t even think all my creatures are women; I just think that I bring out the femaleness in them.
I work at home, in the country, and days will go by when, except for my husband and son and the occasional UPS man, the only sentient creatures that see me are my chickens and turkeys.
Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.
There are, of course, fat characters in books out there, some of them quite enduring and famous. But they tend to be creatures of young-adult or commercial fiction.
All the guys on ‘Breaking Bad’ are really gentle and gorgeous creatures.
We have to choose every day to be active participants. To wake up in the morning and choose this life and make something of it is an incredible thing. Not many living creatures have that option. We have so many opportunities and options – it’s a huge burden, but it’s also the most freeing part of our lives.
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
For many human beings, an interest in the past starts with themselves. That is, in part, a result of biology. Like other creatures, humans have a beginning and an ending, and in between lies their story.
After I recovered from ‘Lioness’, I wanted to write something about animals because I really like mythical creatures, especially dragons. At 12, I was one of those semi-recluses who did better with animals than people. Out of that, came the character, Daine, who could communicate with animals.
There was a magic about pulsars… no other things in the sky had such labels on them. Each one had its own distinct pulsing frequency, so it could be identified by anybody, including other creatures, after a long period of time and far, far away.
Are men and women different creatures? Do we feel things differently? Being a man, I can’t know what a woman feels.
Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It’s always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn’t expect.
That’s sort of what we wanted to do: conquer from the margins, sort of find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation.
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
I grew up watching ‘Star Trek.’ I love ‘Star Trek.’ ‘Star Trek’ made me want to see alien creatures, creatures from a far-distant world. But basically, I figured out that I could find those alien creatures right on Earth. And what I do is I study insects.
We’ve only explored about 5% of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there – fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways we can’t even imagine.
Orthodox theologians insisted that the rest of humankind were only transitory creatures, lost in sin – a view that would support what would become their dominant teaching about salvation, offered only through Christ, and, in particular, through the church they claimed to represent.
Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.
It goes back to the starfish. That’s when the light bulb really popped over my head. We’d found one on the beach, and I was struck by what astonishing creatures they are, talking with Dad about how they regenerate.
Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.
We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework, and we put all of the components together, but there’s always one key aspect that we’re not in charge of, really, and that’s magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite.
I have always thought that pandas, in evolutionary terms, are the most sophisticated animals in the world. They cannot look after themselves; they are useless at reproducing. But to compensate, they have managed to persuade the most advanced creatures on the planet – human beings – to care for their every need.
I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.
It makes my skin crawl to think about the violent ways snakes, lizards, alligators and other exotic creatures are raised and killed for boots, bags and belts.
I always feel safe with a woman photographer. I feel that no matter how they interpret something, they understand all sides of it because they are women, and women are complex creatures.
As a child, I felt that Hallowe’en was a time when creatures of the night suddenly came to life – we would turn off all the lights in the house and let flickering candlelight conjure up scary shadows and create the effect of imaginary figures lurking in dark corners.
Animals represent the abstract notion of acceptance. Living with these funny creatures – you kind of have to accept them. It’s like a test in a way.
To us large creatures, space-time is like the sea seen from an ocean liner, smooth and serene. Up close, though, on tiny scales, it’s waves and bubbles. At extremely fine scales, pockets and bubbles of space-time can form at random, sputtering into being, then dissolving.
God knows we are subtle creatures who are more than able to use candour to avoid acknowledging our deceptions of others and ourselves.
Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.
I have such love to the point of obsessions of people and their minds, and I’m constantly trying to find the beauty in things, and I think people are such unique and complex creatures.
The one thing about ‘Beautiful Creatures,’ ‘The Host’ and ‘The Mortal Instruments,’ which are all well-made movies, is that they were all infected with a dreadful sincerity.
Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga’ was huge for me. Seeing how all the creatures were made, looking inside Jabba The Hut, all of the maquettes lined up, building the world… ‘This is a job?!’ I was always avidly watching special features and behind the scenes stuff.
An actor’s got a serious duty to perform. God’s given him the gift to interpret his creatures. He has to do that honestly and conscientiously.
Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God.
Romania will not be able to evolve if it continues to take cruel decisions against sensitive creatures, which are under the protection of European law.
Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.
Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.
When you start to think about politicians, you’ve got to realize these are strange creatures. Other than the fact that they can’t tell directions, and they have very strange breeding habits, how do you actually work with these things?
