I'll never lose my roots. I think I'm too close to my family for that. I still make my trip back to Nebraska every year, and I still love going back to Texas where I grew up, as well. I've just kind of had to mature a little bit more and get used to a little bit different style of life.
I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
I am pretty sure that all young human beings have, at one time or another in their growing-up, been actors. They have used their imaginations to carry them away from painful or confusing situations... have imagined themselves to be more powerful or beautiful or brave or loving than they are.
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
As a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Serving up ads based on behavioral targeting can itself be an invasion of privacy, especially when the information used is personal.
In '87, I used to do this awful, awful James Brown impression.
The big fun in 'Battleship' is that there are no current battleships in the Navy today. The battleships are about 1,000 feet long and they have huge guns. They were what you saw in WWII. The last battleship that was used was the Missouri, which is what the Japanese surrendered to.
Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.
It became evident to me that there was a very serious political element at work. I know that the term impeachment was bandied about. I do not believe, however, that the word was used with the ferocity it was more recently or that it was in the Nixon years.
As a child, I always enjoyed - my parents used to have these little cocktail parties - and I always loved trying to get the adults to tell me things they weren't supposed to say. And in many ways, that's what my job is today; it's getting people to tell me things that they probably are otherwise not supposed to say.
Really, at a time when they're debating when and where a nativity scene can be used, this is the kind of stuff we need to have out there - outside of the church.
I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depressing, and defeatist, and suggested I take them down. A very wise suggestion on her part.
My parents read me fairy tales every night and I used to believe I was a fairytale princess, like every young girl. I had all the Disney dressing-up costumes and would play every character.
WE used to tour quite a lot during the summer with Everton in my day.
I was always used to being centre stage - something that had its good and bad points.
God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'thank you?'
I have had a very singular kind of life since I started working so young, so I am very used to traveling, working, taking time for myself.
I used to shake my head when I heard about mothers who were shocked - shocked! - when their kids came out. I didn't understand how they had missed seeing something so essential when looking at their children. But too many parents see only what they want to see, and that's true whether our kids are gay or straight.
Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.
We used to tie-dye T-shirts and sell them to classmates. We used to make egg rolls and sell them at street fairs. I worked at the mall. My parents probably spent more money on the gas driving me to different jobs than I made.
My fouls used to be ticky-tacky, but I learned real fast to make them count.
I still have my bad days when I think I'm not getting everything I deserve. But those pass quickly once my Mother gets on the phone and says, 'listen, we used to eat rocks and walk 80 miles a day to school.
In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth.
When I was 20, I used to go around telling stories, and I knew where I was comfortable - onstage, talking, making 'em laugh and listen to the weirdest things. I liked being the center of attention.
Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.
When Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric, he was able to produce record growth year after year by using a few simple principles relentlessly. The system of management he used was called differentiation.
I think Ian McKellen made it all happen, because he used to throw dinner parties and invite everyone over.
I love New York. I'm taking English lessons there for the first time. I used to live in Tokyo, but I needed something new. I'm really close to my family. I miss them all the time, but we Skype a lot.
When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.
The Internet represented a really important tool that would be used by every business out there to some extent. But for the vast majority of companies to say, 'We're an Internet company,' is a little bit like saying, 'We're a fax company because we have a fax machine.'
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
My sons remember me most as a Cardinal. My one son is 26 years old, and I don't think he's ever seen me without a beard. It's not as black as it used to be, but it's still there.
Whenever people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I was older, I would always say that I wanted to be a singer. When I was 12, I decided I would do something about it, so I started writing songs.
I used to have this little mouse. I buy birds from the pet store and I let them go.
