There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.

My breakthrough was when I began to write during my commute, at first taking notes on my Palm Pilot, and then moving on to writing full prose on the tiny QWERTY keyboard of my iPaq smartphone. I got so fast that I was averaging 400 words during the 35 minutes or so I spent on the subway each way, or 800 words round trip.

I like Hindi movies. Although my wife thinks the hero and heroine breaking into a song and dance every five minutes is ridiculous, but I find them entertaining.

I always say horror films are great date movies. In the first twenty minutes, you're going to end up in each other's arms.

I started working a Saturday job at this French cafe from when I was about 14. I lived two minutes away from the cafe and went there every morning. One day, the manager asked if I wanted to work there. I'd never worked before, so thought I'd give it a go.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

I try to sit still for about 15 minutes each morning without making lists or running in overdrive.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

One morning every spring, for exactly two minutes, Israel comes to a stop. Pedestrians stand in place, drivers pull over to the side of the road, and nobody speaks, sings, eats, or drinks as the nation pays respect to the victims of the Nazi genocide. From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, the only sounds one hears are sirens.

First thing I do in the morning, after I have my breakfast and do my spiritual work, is put on my makeup and fix my hair, and I can do my makeup in 15 minutes.

Money you lose you can always make back. But even five minutes of time lost is gone forever.

Remember in 'Goodfellas' when Joe Pesci stops by his mom's house to get a knife but within minutes is served a full-on red-sauce dinner despite his mom having been asleep when he arrived? That is the constant state of preparedness that only a freezer can get you.

I made some truly awful movies. 'Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot' was the worst. If you ever want someone to confess to murder just make him or her sit through that film. They will confess to anything after 15 minutes.

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.

The ceremony took six minutes. The marriage lasted about the same amount of time though we didn't get a divorce for almost a year.

It's so important to keep a marriage alive with small treats and doing little things for each other. Just remembering to say nice things and to have listening time is vital. That ghastly phrase 'quality time' means taking three minutes to sit down and be still with someone rather than yelling over your shoulder as you rush out.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

If you spend five minutes with me or watch me try to balance my checkbook, you can only imagine the disaster I would make of anyone's legal issues.

Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. Practicing is about quality, not quantity. Some days I practice for hours; other days it will be just a few minutes.

Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge.

Oprah is so bright, and her intelligence is so piercing that I don't think anyone who spends a few minutes with her isn't struck by that.

Just as you wouldn't leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn't start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.

The United States is proud to be the first country to recognize the existence of a Jewish State - just 11 minutes after Israel's independence was declared.

Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel's history by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948.