In tough times, we all hope for knights in shining armor, or the cavalry, to show up and effect change.
If you can find a group of women, any age, who are supportive and kind and love you, that's the best. I have a group of girlfriends that I would lay in front of a bus for. They've picked me up through really, really bad times and I can definitely say I've done the same for them.
The definition of swagger, in my opinion, is you have to have that arrogance, that confidence that you are the best out there at all times.
The arts and humanities are vastly more important in troubled times.
They all want to be me. They do! What everybody else says they will do, I've already been doing. They all want to be me. It's become a joke in Congress how Dr. Gingrey and Mr. Kingston have been following my votes. They've even changed votes to what I voted, multiple times. Members of Congress are laughing about it.
Lula da Silva was my hero when he was president. I Googled him so many times. The fact that he got 20 million people out of poverty... that happened by encouraging entrepreneurship, by supporting small business.
My father read 'The New York Times,' my mother did secretarial work, we had a dog, we had a garden, I had a brother.
I know throughout my childhood, there were many times I couldn't stand being a 'Jr.' I wouldn't want anybody else to go through that. If we'd had a boy, he wouldn't have been another Freddie Prinze.
The one great exception to the apathy on reunification is, naturally enough, Berlin. Encircled by the hostile Soviet Zone for ten years, at times blockaded and constantly at the Russians' mercy, Berliners are committed to this one goal with a unique urgency.
When you're watching people in non-title fights making four times the amount of money that a champion makes, it takes away the flavor of being a champion.
A lot of times when people cast me, they want this big, deep black voice... And I tend to recycle them with different roles from time to time.
I think you live a fuller life with someone else, you know, you're firing on all cylinders. It can be a nightmare at times, we all know that, but nevertheless in the end I think to have someone else's input on anything - a book, a meal, your children, life, a walk - is fantastic.
Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times.
I think we've broken a lot of barriers and kind of shattered our glass ceiling that was there for women. There are so many great fighters, and we've proved a lot of people wrong. A lot of the times, our fights are the best fights on the card.
We're all victims of our own hubris at times.
I'm directing episode 10 of the new season of 'Dollhouse' and couldn't be more thrilled. I've visited the set several times in the last year and a half to shadow Joss and other directors in order to prepare. It was important for me to get a feeling for the crew and how they interact.
That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.
Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally, they're successful; most times, they're not. But the system has rebalanced toward the basic principles of tolerance, freedom and democracy that were set forth by the Founders.
I don't consider myself a flashy director. A lot of times, people will look and don't even know what I do.
I never quit. The times when I have quit in the past because I couldn't face trying harder have stayed with me, and the guilt is not worth it.
I was a novelist first. But in the mid-'80s, I did work in television for ten years. And yes, that was frequently the reaction to my scripts. People would say, 'You know, George, this is great. We love it, a terrific script, but it would cost five times our budget to shoot this.'
I'm not interested in gothic storytelling or the horrific for its own sake. I'm always interested in it as a way of getting at larger ideas or important meaning. And you don't see that as much as you'd think in the history of horror cinema. A lot of times, it's scariness for scariness' own sake.
Under normal circumstances, if the centerpiece of a president's campaign is helping the disadvantaged and we are our brother's keeper, the idea that this same guy has an actual brother living in third-world poverty without any help from Obama, this would have been on the cover of 'The New York Times.' But none of them are touching it.
Politics is not the nicest business, but there are still times when people do the right thing.
I do my best to work out 5 days a week. There are times when I can only get in 3 days a week because I am traveling or just need rest due to a hectic schedule. But working out is always a priority, and if I fall off due to my schedule, it is not long before I get back on track.
Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.
Often times, the more power and prestige a person achieves, the more arrogant a person can become.
The Democrats in the Senate adopted a resolution, an amendment, saying that there should be no Guantanamo detainees brought into this country. So, more and more, we're finding the American people on one side, the ACLU and the troglodytes from the New York Times on the other, where they belong.
As a self-employed person, the idea of a break is completely foreign to me. If I completely switch off for any period of time, I know I'm going to pay for it several times over. For me, it's a lot better and easier to stay in touch and know what's going on seven days a week than to switch off.
The 'Rule of Three' is simply getting the other guy to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation, it's really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.
I didn't realise how much I ate Mexican food, like tacos and burritos three times a week, until I came to Europe and couldn't find any.
Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.
There are times when I flick through magazines and think I'm in danger of becoming a prisoner of my own hair.
I'm convinced my mother only had sex eight times.
I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.
I am glad that my fan believed in me and stood by me in my hard times and continued to enjoy my songs. That's the real victory for me.
