The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.
If you're serious about what you're doing, you've got to keep your head and follow your instinct. Maybe you won't reach the same dizzy heights as others, but you will get something back.
When I got out of high school, I was working in restaurants in New York City, when I heard Bill Anderson from The Neighborhood Playhouse was doing private lessons. I started taking classes, and it was a lot of improv and Meisner and repetition.
If we just made one movie, 'The Hobbit,' the fact is that all the fans, the eight-, nine- and 10-year-old boys, they would watch it 1,000 times. Now, they've got three films they can watch 1,000 times.
So as soon as the land was worth something and there was money in the bank, all of a sudden everybody got interested in non-discrimination, in who's really going to administer this stuff.
When I got into politics, it was a shock. People promise all sorts of things and then never deliver.
I got over being embarrassed.
I always felt, even before I got pregnant, that it's better to accentuate your curves. A lot of women try to tuck their butt in or kind of slouch because they're trying to hide. Obviously, you can't suck it in, but it's important to really show off the belly.
I've got a history in my life of difficult times.
I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They pretty much told me the end of everything they got to see before I did.
It's a relaxed intensity I've got to live my life in.
I've had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college, and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood, the cops got called, and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this.
It really started cooking when I moved to Houston. I bought a house and got my own barbeque pit.
The last 16 years of my daddy's life, he got to work for me, and that made him his own boss and he like that.
As I got older, I'd say probably when I got to, like, seventh or eighth grade, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and I went for an open call for an agent, a local agent out there, a woman named Joy Purvis, and she ended up picking me up.
The bohar snapper - they have these huge canines. I got bit by one. One took a chunk out of my ear - they are much scarier than the sharks.
I did Vibe, and I felt old and paternal. I've got ties older than people in that audience. I had a talk with myself. I said, You've got to deal with this better.
I used to think the store detective had followed me all the way home and would knock on the door and go, 'Hello, is this your daughter? She's got three blue lipsticks and a moisturiser from Boots in her bag.' We just used to nick crap. Not even stuff we wanted.
My acting career began at age three and my parents got me into it. I was in a McDonald's commercial.
You've got to keep taking certain risks, because my priority is in acting, it's not in movie stardom.
A friend of mine, that I had known for some time, came up one day with an old guitar. I don't know where he got it, I don't know how long he'd had it, but he knew about two chords on it. He proceeded to teach them to me, and then we proceeded to go crazy over music.
Like, in high school, I was a good student and got straight As. It was very strict and you couldn't do well there unless you studied very hard, but every time there was any trouble, I was the first person they would be talking to.
I had a born-again experience at the age of 33. As a result of that I found a church where I felt I was being fed properly. I don't say that as a reflection on Catholicism. But once I was born again, I got an evangelical spirit.
The Greatest Generation got to save old tires, dig a Victory Garden and forgo sugar. The Richest Generation is being asked to shop.
That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.
I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.
Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.
We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?
If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.
I guess it was but I think peoples morality has changed. It's gotten more liberal and more diverse and even in a sense much more fundamental, you take the fundamental religious right in this country, its got to go back about 50 years.
And even then when you take it, you've got to take it with your whole heart.
I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.
The real excitement and big deal for me started when I got cast in the first X-Men, which was sort of a fluke.
I can take the steel guitars and fiddles off, we can make it a little more pop, cover ideas that are a little less cowboy. But you got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, whose flag you are under? For Garth Brooks, I'm steel, fiddles, red, white and blue.
I've always been known for bold flavors and rustic cooking, but there is another side to me. As you evolve as a cook, you understand life and how serious it is. There comes a point where there's got to be a better balance.
'Each One Lost' I wrote the day after I got home. My week in Afghanistan was a very short trip, but it was a powerful experience.
