If you arrive at a concert ready to play your piece, that's not nearly good enough. You must have your music ready to the point where you can play it on a short rehearsal, after a long plane flight, on a strange piano, having had an unpleasant lunch, in an unfriendly atmosphere. You have to be so over-prepared that you can cope with anything.

We left my birthplace, Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when I was 13. I enjoyed the ethnic variety and the interesting students in my public school, P.S. 134. The kids in my neighborhood were only competitive in games, although unfriendly gangs tended to define the limits of our neighborhood.

My work is about the underbelly of the beauty of nature - and the dark side of nature is its indifference. Nature isn't friendly, nor is it unfriendly - it's the perfect embodiment of the Other.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.

The schizophrenic has no sense of humor. His world is a constantly daunting, unfriendly place.

To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.

I think the western is about people in harsh places trying to tame an unfriendly wilderness. Because life is defined by struggle, it's kind of the perfect microcosmic experience to explore that. 'Here we are, struggling.' It's about people persevering and persevering and persevering.

There's a perception out there that the U.K. has become unfriendly to immigrants. Even if that isn't true, the very fact that that is the perception will make people not even want to come.

If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true.

Most of the characters I have in my children's books are grouchy or annoyed about something or are calling each other unfriendly names. Like my own kids, they're not honeys and sweetie pies and little angels. They're kids. Sloppy, dirty, stinky.

The first question we would ask if aliens landed on this planet is not, 'What does this mean for the economy or jobs?' It would be, 'Are they friendly or unfriendly?'

I think there are a lot of policies that have been unfriendly to workers' wages.

I think we, the Republicans, have been mistyped as unfriendly to minorities and not receptive to minority views.

In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders - if they abandoned their other stakeholders.

I am decidedly unfriendly during a golf game, from the first hole to the last.

My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.

New fathers, political prisoners, traumatised presidential aides, resolute schoolboys, MEPs addressing unfriendly chambers - we all find that Shakespeare has magically anticipated our precise circumstances. How he was possible, I still don't understand; but there isn't a day I'm not grateful that he speaks to me in my own language.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigorously defend it. If people condemned the Communist party, I would speak in its defense.

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God's divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego's insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.