I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.
My dad, he worked rebar, an ironworker. Watching my pops get up every single morning, going into work, working hard - I think that really made me want to work that hard, wanted to make me get up early and go for a run or get a lift in or get some extra hitting in and really try to better myself every day.
Some people have an identity. I have an alibi. I have a shadow self.
I do it because I want to exercise people's compassion and I do it because I really believe that for some reason what I do is important and meaningful.
I continue to vote against such spending increases, but sometimes I think some of my Republican colleagues forgot that we were sent here to shrink the federal government, not to grow it.
I watch a lot of hockey. There are some good hockey players and there are some awfully stupid hockey players.
Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.
I didn't actually know what a vegetarian was until I was 13 years old. I know in this day and age it's hard to believe that, but I think because I grew up on a farm, I wasn't indulged in magazines, newspapers, Internet, television. And so, for some reason, I was never exposed to what a vegetarian was.
A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem; it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction.
I read Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Reader's Digest... I read some responsible journalism, and from that, I form my own opinions. I also happen to be intelligent, and I question everything.
It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends.
The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.
George Wallace for some strange, unknown reason, he liked me. George Wallace came down to Florida, and he went all over Florida, and he said to the people, 'If you all can't vote for me, don't vote for those oval-headed lizards. Vote for Shirley Chisholm!' And that crashed my votes, because they thought that I was in league with him to get votes.
When my daughter was 3, she was eating Cheerios and spilled some on the table. So she swiped them onto the floor. I said, 'Darcy, what are you doing?' She said: 'Don't worry, Daddy, the robot will get it.' I didn't know whether to be horrified or proud. It was this idea that homes take care of themselves and robots are part of that.
It's reached this point where people are fascinated by every intricate detail of other people's lives. And some people are willing to give up their lives like that.
When you're 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren't really good. OK, let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.
There are some things that are under our control, and that is to ensure that we ourselves follow sound macroeconomic stability rules.
I do get angry some time, but if I let that feeling take over it would only cloud my thinking and disable me from making the right decision when it counts the most. I just try to think about my mother, children, God, and of course my freedom.
Because acting was my only professional outlet, I put a ton of pressure on the roles that I did. I overstepped my bounds, I tried to control things that were out of my purview as an actor and in some cases even tried to direct my scenes because I felt I knew how they should run rather than trust the director.
So it took me five years because in the interim I have been doing a lot of personal appearances and movies and some television series that went into the plumbing and I stopped writing for a while.
I'm sure every song has some kind of undertone of what I was going through with Chris. It was my life.
The moment I escaped to China, I didn't have any money; I only had one address in my hand of some long-distance Chinese relatives. I didn't know China was that big. I thought I can find their home very easily, and I would come back one week later. But then I found out the address was a 10-hour drive away.
Some people feel that what we're doing makes no sense, that it's just a waste of money. But it's working.
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.
Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.
I started singing at age three - I opened my mouth some time, singing along to the radio, and my parents were like, 'Wow! You have a really great voice!'
You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.
I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They've financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos.
I started to do stop-motion when I was a kid. You take a Super 8 and make some models, and move, click, move, click. All that. I love all forms of animation, but there is something unique and special to stop-motion: it's more real and the set is lit like a set. But I think it's also a kind of lonely and dark thing to want to do.
My dad raised me with some good advice: 'Always tell the truth. Always shoot from the hip. You might not have many friends, but you'll never have enemies, because people will always know where you're coming from.'
The thing about research is that there's no end. You constantly have this fear that an expert who knows more than you will call you out on some detail in your book.
I was conscious of the fact that it could be to my disadvantage to marry a white guy - that some folks would hold that against me.
They are damn good projects - excellent projects. That goes for all the projects up there. You know some people make fun of people who speak a foreign language, and dumb people criticize something they do not understand, and that is what is going on up there - God damn it!
From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.
