Jimmy Carter was unquestionably the most moral president of my lifetime, but he wasn't much of a president.
My grandfather read the 'John Carter of Mars' books to me when I was young.
If I have a spare second, I usually catch up on the many magazines I'm behind on or watch the latest movies on demand that I usually missed at the theater. I love magazines. My top three: Graydon Carter's 'Vanity Fair', Adam Moss' 'New York magazine' and David Remnick's 'New Yorker.'
John Carter was also one of our first recognizable superhumans and there is little doubt that his extraordinary physical feats inspired Superman's creators. Remember: before Superman could fly or turn back time, he was nothing less than an earthbound crime-fighting John Carter in tights.
When you say 'failure,' that seems really dramatic, but a lot of failure is just really depressing and mundane. I remember the first time I ever played a concert in Italy. I played a venue that held 900 people, and I think five people showed up. It wasn't a big, 'John Carter of Mars' type failure. It wasn't dramatic; it was just depressing.
I didn't work for Jimmy Carter all those years to go to cocktail parties. I was there as a political adviser, a short-order cook, to work on topical matters.
I'd love to have done 'John Carter.' I'd love to work for the Disney Corporation.
When I worked in the White House for President Carter, we tried to do comprehensive tax reform and we made some progress, and other presidents have as well.
I do feel I'm responsible to carrying on the music. That's what I was charged with as a kid. When I was a little girl, I was told, 'When we are gone' - when you're a kid, you never think they'll ever be gone - 'you have to keep the music alive, the Carter Family songs, and add your own songs.'
I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.
Basically, I grew up watching Carter girls on stage, watching my grandmother, my mom and my aunts perform. They used to say, 'Okay, Carter girls, you're on!'
Very early on, you figure out that you put your self-esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that go.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
If you had told me in 1997 that even 5 people would be waiting online for me to sign my new book in 2009, I would have jumped around like Joe Carter in the 1993 World Series. I love it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't like it. The only thing I worry about is carpal tunnel syndrome - my last tour almost caused it.
I met Gerald Ford. I met Richard Nixon. I met Jimmy Carter. I met Dwight Eisenhower when he was a general. George Bush senior. I haven't met Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, although I got a letter from him.
It's a matriarchal family, the Carters. A.P. was the original head of the Carter family, but the women were always strong. There were no questions asked in that regard; you had better be strong.
The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there's only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm.
On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.
Fighting back against Iran is difficult and costly. No American president from Carter to Obama has been willing to take it on.
If you could have imagined that someone is happy that Obama is president, it has to be Jimmy Carter because he is no longer the worst president in our history.
In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon's arrogant, isolated presidency. But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency.
There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.
Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
The women's movement was just coming into being, and I got involved with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and all these great women. We then got involved with Carter, who was running for president, and we created the first International Women's Conference or the National Women's Conference for Carter.
White House cultures inevitably reflect the president's character. Jimmy Carter is a thoroughly honest, good person. So was his White House.
I don't claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I'm home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, 'Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.'
Whenever I've not known what to do, I've always gone back to the Carter Family because there was nothing like singing with my aunts and my mom to my grandma.
When it comes to jobs, President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years look like good old days. If we fired Jimmy Carter then, why would we rehire Barack Obama now?
There are no rules when it comes to songwriting, so I'd turn Carter family songs from the 1930s into pop songs.
I remember telling President Carter on his first night, when I was escorting people around, that I was interested in continuing public service and that politics didn't matter - but it does, doesn't it?
In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.
It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.
