Meeting people who want to start a charity, help out their families, or raise money for a good cause has been really fun.
We have to get government out of the job of picking winners and losers. That's what they've been doing the last year and a half, getting in the way of businesses that are trying to reinvest to get our economy back on its feet.
If women are the key to Africa's future - and I believe they are - we must figure out how to take away the barriers to their participation.
Show business is like a bumpy bus ride. Sometimes you find yourself temporarily juggled out of your seat and holding onto a strap. But the main idea is to hang in there and not be shoved out the door.
One day, I made a remark that I might work with people with mental illness, and somebody in the press heard it, and it was in the paper. And the more I thought about it and found out about it, the more I thought it was just a terrible situation with no attention. And I've been working on it ever since.
We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.
I thrive on physical confrontation. It's a competitive juice in me. I'm always going to have that in the back of my mind. So whether I'm 49, 59, 69 or 109, I'm always going to think that I can go out and compete.
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
That's why so many stars are making pictures in Europe today. The tax guys are making thieves out of everybody.
As a writer, I always try as hard as possible to get out of the way of the story, so maybe that's the most important thing my readers should know - I'm all about the story, not about the ego.
I didn't have many friends; I might not have had any friends. But it all turned out good in the end, because when you aren't popular and you don't have a social life, it gives you more time to focus on your future.
The more I can make a person comfortable in their environment by taking my ego's hat off and leaving it at the door, then they can dive deep within themselves and we can pull out something interesting that people have never heard before. It's the stuff that's - that no one's ever heard before is really interesting.
With me and Bill... I think we started out with $15 apiece and split the other $20 between the band.
But I think that any young drummer starting out today should get himself a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument that he wants to play.
'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't go back to the way it was after 'The Simpsons' came out.
I used to hang out by the food table at parties because you don't have to talk to anybody. If you do then you can talk about the food.
All my musical foundations go back to the age of 3. My family tell me that I used to listen to the old crystal set, then go to the piano and pick out the tune that I just heard.
I've got three beautiful kids that wear me out after I get home from practice. I think that's a good thing so I'm able to get my rest.
I have an appearance on a new TV show called 'Bar Karma' on Current TV. I had the most fun ever making this episode. I play someone with a multiple personality, and I think my fans will be surprised and get a real giggle out of it. It's a new model for TV in that it is interactive with the community.
If things are said maliciously, and they're meant to hurt, then that's the sort of thing we need to try and stamp out.
I'd like to see fashion slow down a bit. What freaks me out about fashion today is the speed - the speed of consuming, the speed of ideas. When fashion moves so fast, it takes away something I always loved, which is the idea that fashion should be slightly elusive. Hard to grasp, hard to find.
You may have read that I went to M.I.T. In 1982 I filled out a Who's Who survey with joking responses, and they never bothered to check the facts.
I would spend hours absorbing every intonation, every inflection - how the singer would convey a sentiment and how it would sound coming out of their head. All of those things I very carefully watched and absorbed, and so I guess I was studying my whole life, although not in any sort of conventional way.
Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.
It could fairly be said that the U.S. is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world. As our neighbors to the south elect left-wing or even socialist governments, we are lurching further to the right. As Europe becomes less engaged to the Church, we are becoming more fundamentalist.
Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.
There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - the way as a writer you call out into the world and throw your words into the world. You're not praying to a god, but you're almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That's what books do: they're an invitation to readers.
I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries.
Look at how many North Carolina kids have played for me or tried out for me or coached with me. I've had Dennis Wuycik, Steve Previs, Billy Chamberlain, Donald Washington, Darrell Elston, Tommy LaGarde, Bobby Jones. You name it, I've had them. Whatever Coach has ever asked me to do, I've done. Because I love the school, and I worship him.
There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'
If you can get an out on one pitch, take it. Let the strikeouts come on the outstanding pitches. Winning is the big thing. If you throw a lot of pitches, before you know it, your arm is gone.
I'm far too low maintenance to ever spend more than five minutes getting ready to go out.
The new physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a universe made out of energy, everything is entangled; everything is one.
I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.
Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you're out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to.
I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'
