The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
Even having to do the amount of press that I have to do is dreadful and gives me so much anxiety. After having done this whole slew of press for 'Big Love', now I'll have anxiety dreams for like a week and a half about all the stupid things I said.
I've got two sisters and they're both married and they're both much more settled into the way things are.
Home will always be Northern Ireland but my schedule means for the next few years I won't be there as much. I can't do the same things that I did a year ago. That is I'm something conscious of, but I'm not sad about it. It's fine.
Talk radio around Boston is brutal, and I think that's part of what goes on is that people as they're driving to and from work start listening to these jerks, and I say jerks, because I don't think they know what they're talking about and they're just serving some things up as controversy so they can sell the show to sponsors.
I turned down a lot of things that were so-called commercial. You're coming out of one film, and then they want you to be in the same one.
I want to write about serious things, but I want to write about them in a way that makes them accessible to a large number of people - to take them through the argument by dramatizing the circumstances in which these issues are being discussed.
Very often, people will come out and say, 'Greeks aren't doing things, Greeks aren't making changes, there's no reform,' That is hogwash. We have made a huge effort. The Greek people have made a huge effort.
We very quickly forget about the wonderful things we've got. People lose their excitement because there's too much. Basically we're experiencing nothing, because everything is available to us.
My hair has been so wrecked over the years by various things.
I was the one that was always dancing and got along with everybody, but I also spoke my mind. If I didn't agree with something the teacher would say, I'd tell her, so I would get in trouble for things like that. I've always been a good/bad boy.
One of the things you learn as a journalist is that when there's no accountability, we humans are capable of tremendous avarice and venality. That's true of union bosses - and of corporate tycoons. Unions, even flawed ones, can provide checks and balances for flawed corporations.
A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.
Like everybody, I have invested in things that have gone bad, because there's never any guarantee of success or profit when it comes to money.
We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.
In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that's not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I'm still mostly American, but it's a nice tension.
On the one hand, the idea of marriage and the sort of traditional family life repulses me. But on the other hand, I long for it, you know what I mean? I'm constantly in conflict with things. And it is because of my past and my upbringing and the journey that I've been on.
There are a lot of things that frustrate me. I get frustrated when I have to wait at a red light.
Control what you can control. Don't lose sleep worrying about things that you don't have control over because, at the end of the day, you still won't have any control over them.
The two major things that changed the makeup of all professional sports are money generated by television and courts that players went to in order to win their freedom as free agents.
When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.
I read every script from beginning to end, and I read every draft that I can. I like the show, I like the character, and I want to protect both of those things.
One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing.
Today, as an independent, an entrepreneur, and a former mayor, I believe we need a president who is a problem solver, not a bomb thrower. Someone who can bring members of Congress together to get things done. And I know Hillary Clinton can do that because I saw it firsthand.
There is a list of things I'm not allowed to discuss at the dinner table! I am extraordinarily passionate about the Black Death, which is not something most people are into.
One of the biggest things we have to be able to do is to handle conflict and handle it correctly. We're able to look at our biases, look at our frustration, look at our sin in this area, our pride and our selfishness. It allows us to move forward.
My Instagram is all me. I like to keep it very personal, and I'd like to keep it that way. You don't really follow to see promotional things at all times. It's my connection with my fans.
Things change. I used to have a real resistance to it and hold on to things, but let things happen and go with it, and you will actually go through it, and it's a lot less stressful.
I've learned the hard way how valuable privacy is. And I've learned that there are a lot of things in your life that really benefit from being private. And relationships are one of them.
I don't fool with a lot of things that I can't have fun with. There's not much reward in that.
I try to take the time to appreciate and I certainly do appreciate and I do feel proud but that is probably one of the things I need to work on, building a bit of time for myself.
Obviously in a campaign, people say lots of things that they find, when they get in the office, life's a little different.
We were constantly moving to different countries and adjusting to new things. It was such a free feeling. I'm glad I didn't have a traditional upbringing.
As a coach, the more experience you have, the more you're around players, it helps so you see how guys learn, ways that are effective to reach different people. You see the aftermath of all the things that happened; you don't just see what happens at the game, you see what happens after the game, the followthrough, and those types of things.
One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unsurpassed at presenting more than 50 centuries of work. I go there constantly, seeing things over and over, better than I've ever seen them before.
