There are fewer people living in tents, more people with access to quality health care, more kids who are in school, and for the first time in a long, long time, Haiti is attracting private sector investments.
Ironically, if only because over the years I've known so many - from college deans to studio executives to European expats - who come to Los Angeles aspiring to nothing other than living in Topanga, I wound up there by accident.
Shameless self-publicity works, of course: living your life as a soap opera.
Given the choice of living in Los Angeles or living in Sydney, I would choose Sydney.
The idea that working a blue-collar job and living in a working-class community provides barriers that are unique to your circumstances - that's not a very controversial subject anymore. I think it's something that people on both the Left and the Right probably accept.
There's an Armed Forces Haggadah and an Alcoholics Anonymous Haggadah and an LGBT Haggadah. Some people make a new Haggadah every year. It's a real living document... They're just constantly made throughout time.
People work for a living. They got families to raise. Their lives are tough.
I work in our living room, a strange room in a strange, topsy-turvy house. I work underneath this enormous bookshelf.
Unless they have disabilities to cope with, no family should get more from living on benefits than the average family gets from going out to work. No more open-ended chequebook.
You know, I was the class clown in Catholic school, but I never thought I would make a living out of it!
The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.
When you're 14, 15, and you get together and start making a noise, it is the world opening up. You have that indestructible feeling when you're young. But your ambitions when you are 13 are different when you're 25. By that time, your ambition isn't to be a star anymore; it's to make a living doing music.
Poker is a charismatic game. People who are larger than life play poker and make their living from playing games and hustling.
I made most of my living doing beauty, because I was never really the fashion person.
I didn't really know you could make a living in songwriting. I was just very fortunate to have the opportunity to play a few songs for a guy there named Jimmy Ritchey. Through that meeting, I met another couple guys and ended up getting a publishing deal in Nashville.
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.
Americans are changing right before our eyes. They are choosing different lifestyles, families, traditions and ways of living.
My hair journey involved a lot of trying to figure out how to deal with my hair as a bi-racial girl in a white community living in Long Island, N.Y., where no one had a clue what to do with it.
There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.
Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.
Laws are the terms by which independent and isolated men united to form a society, once they tired of living in a perpetual state of war where the enjoyment of liberty was rendered useless by the uncertainty of its preservation. They sacrificed a portion of this liberty so that they could enjoy the remainder in security and peace.
I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating.
If I wasn't acting, I would own a farm. Not like growing crops but maybe have a few animals like cows, and maybe an alpaca or a llama. I would chop wood all day. I would make a living doing that; it's, like, an idealistic scenario for me. It's very contrary to my upbringing, but maybe that's the appeal to it.
In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation.
I hang out with people who are amazing parents and really value a rich living. I'm not talking about monetarily. I'm talking spiritually and mentally, and we help make sure that each one is on their game for their spouses.
As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.
I'm capable of living in the moment. And I'm especially capable of living in the moment of sitting on my sofa and watching other people's moments.
We are living in the 21st century, and children are dying of hunger, so how do we fight it?
All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.
I am somehow allowed by the universe to do exactly what I want to do to make a living.
