I've never been comfortable being a pawn. I work with brands where I feel like I can have my say and companies that I'm proud to be in a relationship with. Partnerships take a lot of time. If I am going to put my name and my face and my energy behind something, I want it to be authentic.
When you get inside a literary novel you feel that the author, more often than not, just doesn't know enough about things. They haven't been around enough - novelists never go anywhere. Once I discovered true books about real things - books like 'How To Run a Company' - I stopped reading novels.
Historically, the women who have been the great painters of the canon have very often have been the wives or daughters of supportive men. Like Artemisia, whose father was a very established painter. I will say that the two current contemporary artists I admire the most are women: Kara Walker and Swoon.
I've always been pessimistic about China. I can't see China going on without economic or social issues.
Everyone in my family has been in music - my cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather - so it's quite a big family tree.
I have been working since I was 14, nonstop.
We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.
I consider my girls the greatest gift from God in life. And I also love the career that I have built, lost and rebuilt. But the highs and lows of my career would not have been as exciting or manageable to me if I didn't have children and a partner for life with whom to share it all.
When are we going to stop labeling everyone? How many times have I been referred to as 'out gay actor?' Do we say, 'out heterosexual actor' when we refer to Tom Hanks?
All my life, people have been underestimating me.
I have led an exceptional life in some ways, yes. I mean, I've been very lucky. I seem to have had a gift for landing in the right place at the right time.
In a lot of ways, Nauru is something like a canary in a coal mine: It's a tiny place with more than its share of troubles, most of them the kind that might have been prevented.
Greece has given Europe the opportunity to fix a defect in the euro zone, that is the fact that we did not have a fiscal union. Now steps have been taken to begin that process. And there is more solidarity from nation to nation, and that is a good thing. That has been Greece's gift to Europe.
You are not any different. You can do anything you want. So many times, I've been asked what I think of women stand-ups. If you actually look around, there are so many female comedians starring in the biggest TV shows.
I've never been the straight rapper that is going to stand in a cipher and battle all day. I started off battle rapping, but to me, making songs became more important than freestyles... I've met many rappers who can freestyle but can't make a record.
My parents couldn't give me a whole lot of financial support, but they gave me good genes. My dad is a handsome son-of-a-gun, and my mom is beautiful. And I've definitely been the lucky recipient. So, thank you, Mom and Dad.
The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.
I've been a lucky man. I've only faced one real tragedy: the death of my wife, Maggie, from cancer in 1995.
Around 1999, CNBC offered me a full-time post, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.
The media has been trying to protect Obama. The media has been trying to shield Obama. Several in the Republican establishment in the so-called conservative media have even been trying to shield Obama.
I'm a gamer at heart and always have been. I'm also a filmmaker.
Television has its own award. It's called the Emmy. It's a good award. I like it. I have one. But you don't see movies like 'The King's Speech' win Oscars and then go to TV and qualify for Emmys. In documentaries, some networks have been able to game the system.
The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect.
I've always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns.
I've been incredibly lucky with the directors I've worked with.
Most people figured I'd be in jail. I've been proving people wrong my whole life.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the debate about monetary policy and the nation's financial system had been going on for over a century. Increasingly, the shortcomings of the existing system were causing too much harm to ignore.
I've never been very practical or realistic - I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it?
I want to paint. That is probably going to sound so pretentious coming from someone who's been a musician.
I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.
My politics are wildly different from hers, but someone who has been good for women in politics, stamped her authority on European and world affairs, is Angela Merkel.
There have been some terrible winters in Chicago, where it feels like I'm literally being punched in the face, and everyone walks around looking stunned like they've just witnessed a murder.
I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along - where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.
A lot of artists have really been supportive over the years.
I've always been interested in people who think out of their time, and I have this passion, actually, for science. I'm just so enormously interested in how, when you think of these revolutionary ideas, other people get threatened, especially if you are different.
