My truest passion is writing, so I continue to do that on my own while seeing what all the buzz is about being in front of the camera.
Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let's not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it's not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly.
I've learned during my life that if I am in hell, I make my own glory. I've also been in glory, and perhaps I've made my own hell, but I certainly don't take anyone down with me.
With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: 'How can you, as a man, talk about three women?'
The IMF and other multilateral institutions do not appear to have prevented nations from manipulating the value of their own currencies.
In cyberspace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold security for one's own country by sacrificing that of others.
A spiritual person is also in touch with his or her own reality, feelings and thoughts, and the reality of the people around him or her, not projecting on them.
As an adult, I've always found the stereotype that Jews are liberal a curious one; my parents' circle was predominantly conservative, not just on Israel but on most political issues. Most of all, they were intensely (and this is a word I remember repeating in my own angry adolescent dialogues with myself) tribal.
Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.
I really like the whole urban farming idea, because I grow my own produce in L.A., and I think it's great to teach people here in Manhattan so they can do the same.
You can get anything from Mozilla Firefox-based themes to nature themes to your own photographs.
When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23!
There are two types of conductors. One is the good conductor who can do passionate music but also listen to the singers and do the orchestra. And then there are great conductors, who have their own opinion on the music, who are ruling everything - and not listening much to the singers, but the orchestra play amazingly.
We were so poor as kids. I didn't even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode - we didn't have any of that. We started with a humble log house, milk cow, garden-raised our own food, killed a hog every year in the fall, and had the meat hanging up in the smokehouse - that was our childhood, me and ol' Si.
As a young writer, I questioned the idea that I had to write fiction in a world where I could write my own ethnicity only and nothing else. 'Fach' to me was a little like that. As a biracial person, that's an inherently unstable identity.
In economic terms, we've always thought of work as a disutility - as something you do to get something else. Now it's increasingly a utility - something that's valuable and worthy in its own right.
One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.
One lesson I learned from 'The Monstrumologist' was never to get too attached to your own characters. That's harder in practice than in theory. At the end of the third book - which coincided with the end of my contract - I was an emotional wreck. I mourned Will Henry and Warthrop.
Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.
I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I don't believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don't believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people's innermost thoughts are their own.
Once I turned 35, I got the bonus of some wisdom and began to accept life on its own terms.
When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.
I have my own worries and concerns and frustrations, but I'm doing something I love to do. My wife and kids are in good shape. What is there not to be happy about?
Covers are always so fun to do, but there's nothing like telling your own story.
'Impressionism' was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision).
Music definitely gave me a focus. I was an artist without an outlet. Let's just say if I was not famous, I could have been infamous. I could've had my own episode of 'American Gangster.'
Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.
Standing here in a house of history, and acutely aware of my own imperfections, I pledge that if I am confirmed I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country.
An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home.
I had my own ups and downs in getting Indian citizenship. But, ultimately I got it and I am happy about it. I like India. My love is here. I am a proud Indian.
When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.
No industry is immune and no occupation is safe. All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families.
In my experience, there are plenty of bad middle-class parents: those who put their own lives and careers before those of their children and make precious little time available for their offspring, preferring instead to hire in childcare and shower them with the latest and most expensive gadgets.
I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.
The southern Chinese are a mixture of the Han, or northern Chinese, and the local tribes, some of which allowed women a great deal of freedom - much to the horror of the Chinese who were good Confucians. As a result, the folklore from southern China has strong females; and I found that the folktales mirrored my own experience.
My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor.
