Oh! what waves of crime and bloodshed have swept like the waves of a deluge down the valley of the Rhine! War has laid his mailed hand on those desolate towers and ruthlessly torn down what time has spared, yet he could not mar the beauty of the shore, nor could Time himself hurl down the mountains that guard it.

You pass the old L.A. County jail, which is surprisingly beautiful. It's got a handsome stone facade and stately columns. The new L.A. County jail - called The Twin Towers - isn't beautiful at all; it's a stucco panopticon the color of sick flesh.

It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.

Watching the completed version of The Two Towers for example, I was very conscious of scenes - sometimes whole sequences - that I had seen being filmed or edited but which hadn't made it into the final cut.

From the exterior face of the wall towers must be projected, from which an approaching enemy may be annoyed by weapons, from the embrasures of those towers, right and left.

There are fully forty towers, which are lofty and well built, the largest of which has fifty steps leading to its main body, and is higher than the tower of the principal tower of the church at Seville.

If you are in the country, you should notice landmarks - that is, objects which help you to find your way or prevent you getting lost, such as distant hills, church towers, and nearer objects, such as peculiar buildings, trees, gates, rocks, etc.

I think 'Two Towers' is a completely distinct film from 'Fellowship of the Ring' or 'Return of the King.' I think that you can watch them as a group and watch how the story evolves, but I think each one was made in its own entirety, and each one has its own palate of sound and music and color and characterization.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

If you want to know why the towers of American capitalism are crumbling, I recommend reading 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' by G. Edward Griffin.

I do have a regard for the musicality of language that came from BBC sitcoms like 'Fawlty Towers.'

Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.

It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of others.

When I was a very young author, I knew I needed to build myself a tower outside of Europe. Like when you're a hunter, and build towers to watch the animals move. I knew I would never understand the world without that perspective. I came to Africa for that rational reason, although I love Mozambique now.

The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so every camera would be focused on the second tower when the plane hit. It was not only the murder, but the perpetual image of the horror that permeated into people's consciousness.

At a certain stage in his evolution, man himself had been able to lay hold upon a higher order of things, which raised him above the level of the beasts that perish, and enabled him to see, at least in the distance, the shining towers of the City of God.

If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more things I actually want to share and fewer things just for the sake of impressing others.

How could I share with you how I felt when two towers that I loved, two pieces of steel and glass and concrete fell down, when actually they took with them thousands of human lives? That is the actual tragedy. But those towers were almost human for me. I was in love with them, and that's why I married them with a tight rope.

I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.