A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia.
Over the years, a number of people have asked me why I tend to write at this great length. I've put some thought into the answer, and it can be boiled down one word: consequences. Well, maybe two words: consequences and characters. Or perhaps, consequences, characters, and the subconscious mind - above all the subconscious mind.
At death, you're going to be needing some spiritual guidance and some kind of inner knowledge that extends beyond the boundaries of the physical world... it's what's inside that counts.
Mostly I listen to old-time music, some bluegrass, some Americana stuff, too many to name. But of the younger acts, there are The Freight Hoppers, who were big in the '90s, and The Foghorn Stringband from Oregon, and there's a lot of young string bands coming up now, basically punkers who play acoustic instruments forming new bands.
It's my privilege to work with an actor like Vikram who gets into the skin of the character he is playing, so much so that after the shoot it takes him quite some time to get back to his real self.
I've been around some really good guys from different teams.
As for my schedule, I tend to go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, and I try to be as productive as possible. Some days, I can devote to one specific thing. Other days, it's a catch-all day.
We are witnessing a very slow and painful cultural shift. Some male gamers with a deep sense of entitlement are terrified of change. They believe games should continue to cater exclusively to young heterosexual men with ever more extreme virtual power fantasies.
A black man - I say a black man, we got no corner on the market, but every day in some form or fashion you got to prove you're a man. But you want to keep the life-and-death situations down. I can get beat. But there's getting beat and there's getting stomped.
I've started to think that maybe I wouldn't mind passing my demented genius on to some small thing who can set fire and breathe profanity.
Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.
Some countries have more water than others - some can afford to use clean water to flush their poop away, and some can't.
Santa Monica Bay is less polluted today than when I first moved to the area in the 1970s, because actions have been taken to avoid putting some of the noxious materials into the sea. I think people are more aware than they once were, the air is cleaner, water generally is, in spite of the fact that there are more people.
Everybody laughs all the time, and some of the worst things that happen make you laugh 'cause it's a defense isn't it, I suppose.
I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.
I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so.
I've had some pretty awful jobs that I don't miss, like working on a nightclub door, or compiling VIP lists at 3 A.M. in the morning, but sometimes it's just got to be done.
One of the reasons that I accepted, once asked to do Star Trek, was to give a single child a chance to see the long thought, to see themselves some 400 years hence. It occurred to me that we must ensure that we keep in front of children the ever-changing horizon.
I always loved stage combat at drama school so I can't wait to get on set and kick some evil monsters into the next dimension!
I think what my hope is is that the only downside of having a steady job on television is, I think for all actors, there's a piece, there's some adrenaline, and part of the love of the job is not knowing what's coming next, and the variety.
Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired.
Thousands of people come to LA every year, and some of them just disappear. Somebody gets them. In the States around 100,000 people vanish each year. I don't know what that means. Maybe there's something that just pulls 'em out.
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do.
Some people think the world will end in 2012. I think we've got until 2014. I'm an optimist.
Whatever I'm doing, I'm in that moment and I'm doing it. The rest of the world's lost. If I'm cooking some food or making soup, I want it to be lovely. If not, what's the point of doing it?
It's difficult to explain exactly how I react to music, but if it makes me feel anything at all, then I'll have some kind of emotional relationship to it. That's what defines good music to me - if it makes me truly feel something.
You've got to make a decision when you write about your life, and I decided I was going to be honest, and some of those things will be embarrassing.
When I was fresh out of law school, I had a burning desire to do something important, to have an impact in some way, but I didn't know what it was.
If you double count some votes, that makes other votes disenfranchised.
I saw a documentary on the Naadam festival that happens in Mongolia during the summer. One of the features of it is a horse race across the plains that all the young men enter - some as young as 12 years old. It's such a spectacular sight. It's incredible to think that this is a tradition that has been going on for centuries.
I rarely come away from presenting the 'Today' programme without some sense of regret. There is always some question that I should have asked, or some point that I should have made. This is annoying but not surprising. Perfection is hard to achieve in a three-hour live programme.
A lot of times you see really good-looking guys on TV and you sort of assume that maybe there's some sort of vacuity behind them.
We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.
What I've found I really like about sci-fi is it can look at philosophical questions about humanity but in a different context. It can really make you think. That's what 'Doctor Who' does, even if it's a bit silly some other times.
Films go into vaults, art into museums, and music into halls of fame. Most fashion is worn for a few seasons and off-loaded into the recycling bin or, worse, some landfill.
