Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened ambition inspired and success achieved.

Scotland is my country the nation that shaped me that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality.

A writer should get as much education as possible but just going to school is not enough if it were all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I'm very jealous of my daughter's education. She's been inspired by her teachers and nobody inspired me as a teenager.

I was very inspired by Les Blank's film 'Burden of Dreams.' I think what's unique about his film and the two I've made is that they're close examinations of filmmakers and how their own emotional experiences reflect in the material they're rendering and vice versa - how that material sometimes colors their own lives.

The Columbia is lost but the dreams that inspired its crew remain with us.

Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits it is part of my own being.

While I was at college studying design I decided to paint. I was also greatly inspired by the colours that I had seen on my travels in the Brazilian Rain forest.

Design works if it's authentic inspired and has a clear point of view. It can't be a collection of input.

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling the death of inspired response the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.