Since my father is a musician as well, he taught me growing up that if you can play jazz, you can learn all instruments and write on them. He wanted me to be a songwriter that can do anything in any genre. I'm all about doing every genre.
Stephen Fry is a master exponent of the English tongue. Some people might think that he is the most irritating man in Britain, but my wife and I love him all the same.
It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women - but he can think of them as he ought - as sisters, not as sparring partners.
Roger Clemens is one of the most wonderful men I've ever known. I loved him very much... still love him to this day. He treated me like a princess.
Like everyone, I was a huge fan of David Boies, and from what I knew about him, I thought he might 'get' me. So I sent him an email. I said I want to practice law but that I didn't want to stop writing and I asked if there was any way I could practice law for him.
If a football player has a bad game, he's allowed to do that because he plays once or twice a week. With fighting, it's once every few months.
Crispin Glover is unusual, but not as unusual as he sometimes presents himself. We got along nicely.
There's no one in the world close to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is a phenomenon. He's brilliant. Just because his physique belies that, don't underestimate him.
The youth in India tend to be rebellious, as with everywhere else, and that makes Shiva exciting. He has the rebellious qualities that the youths like.
The minute I understand a man, he is no longer exciting and a challenge to me. And the last thing in the world I want is for a man to understand me and know what's always going on inside my head. It takes away from all my mystery, which, as I've told you before, is the most important thing between a man and a woman.
Once we accept violence as an adaptation, it makes sense that its expression is calibrated to the environment. The same individual will behave differently if he comes of age in Detroit, Mich., versus Windsor, Ontario; in New York in the 1980s versus New York now; in a culture of honor versus a culture of dignity.
As far back as I can remember, my mother would have me down by the bed at night with her, praying. I can still hear her voice calling my name to God and telling him that she wanted me to follow him in whatever he called me to do.
Obviously, the Night's King is clearly a symbol of something very unpleasant in our psyche, and he even raises wights from the dead, which is probably everybody's worst fear, being actually used after we're dead.
Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.
Rick Rubin is super intriguing to me because he has become this god producer in completely drastically different genres, which very few people have done.
If I wrote a Jewish superhero, he'd have awesome time-traveling powers. I'd call him Doctorow.
I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise.
Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized - if he went to watch a theater show, 'Ah! He is here tonight.'
During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.
I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn't think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.
The Lord is well aware of our mortality. He knows our weaknesses. He understands the challenges of our everyday lives. He has great empathy for the temptations of earthly appetites and passions.
It isn't just that Obama's policies have failed; it's that he has essentially given up and is asking us to accept a lesser America going forward, as if resigned to the fatalistic belief that America has begun an inevitable and unavoidable decline.
If I were running against Chuck Schumer. I would take every one of his Sunday press releases - and there are 52 for as many years as he's been there - and I would ask, 'How many of the things he said he was proposing became law?' I doubt many.
I think it's irresponsible when celebrities imply they're doing it all themselves. My son has aunties and uncles around all the time, and my husband is my hero. He's really full-on. I couldn't do it any other way.
My dad is from Panama; he came to the U.S. in 1971. He came to study chemical engineering at the University of Delaware. He thought he would go back, and then he met my mom here. I was born and mostly raised in Delaware.
Andres Segovia, the great name for guitar, he put classical guitar on the map. He was the proponent of it, the best in the world. So I was listening to a record that he had made, and a little bauble happened in the middle of the record. A finger slipped, and I said, 'Wait a minute. He's not allowed to make mistakes,' - my mind.
I was playing in the league when Ray Guy was playing in the league. He was the best kicker I've ever seen. He could bullet that ball 70 yards.
A just and a brave man acts fearlessly and with explicitness; he does not shun, but court, the scrutiny of mankind; he lives in the face of day, and the whole world confesses the clearness of his spirit and the rectitude of his conduct.
Well I have you know, several CD's out; one of my best friends is Sully Erna from Godsmack - he is Godsmack, and we're going to be working on an album together.
I think Coran Capshaw is such a brilliant entrepreneur and he always thinks about new stuff; the biggest stuff you can imagine. I know he's working on a lot of things for me at the moment, and I think it will definitely help my career to go to the next level.
I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on 'Keene at Noon.'
A man never apologizes for the fact that he has to work. He might say, 'Hey, I am so sorry my hours were long today,' but he'd never feel he has to explain the very fact that he has a career. Once I stopped apologizing, I noticed both my kids also stopped complaining and asking me 'why' I worked.
If there really is a god, then he really looks after me.
My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.
The biggest problem was convincing my father that organic food was worth eating. All he could think of was the nut loaf with yeast gravy that my mother made in the Seventies.
