Dad thought something very fishy was going on when, at 22, I was offered a job for £1,000 a year - more than Dad paid his own staff - for inventing cheese recipes and writing leaflets at the Dutch Dairy Bureau in London.
I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.
I have Twitter auto-post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I've always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I've never actually gone back and run the averages.
No person can be more deeply sensible than myself of the danger of entangling alliances with any foreign nation. That we should avoid such alliances has become a maxim of our policy consecrated by the most venerated names which adorn our history and sanctioned by the unanimous voice of the American people.
Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.
During practice, I train with both women and men. I think it's good to have a mixture of strengths because both have different fighting styles. Every person offers something different, and the more body types you get used to, the better fighter you will become.
Doing a play, you have a little bit more time, obviously. You rehearse for a month before you get up in front of people. It's a totally different energy. With film, TV, you want to try to capture lightning-in-a-bottle moments. I don't try to rehearse as much with that stuff, because you want those sparks of something to come out, if they do.
I've never considered myself an actor; I get much more immediate satisfaction singing. If you sing good, people clap. On television, you never know whether you've done well or not.
If anything, the bailouts actually hindered lending, as banks became more like house pets that grow fat and lazy on two guaranteed meals a day than wild animals that have to go out into the jungle and hunt for opportunities in order to eat.
How do you survive living in a cell knowing you are innocent? Many of those exonerated whom I have met seem to have a more benign, grateful attitude toward life than those of us who walk free. Many find a religious or spiritual stronghold.
If there is a course that is quant-oriented, you need to focus on that, but if it is a course that is more general management-oriented, do you not need entrance examinations which are more all round?
By adopting a wonderful mutt, you'll save a life and help reduce animal homelessness while also boosting your chances of a more robust new furry friend, as mixed-breed dogs have demonstrated better health and longer life spans than their purebred cousins.
Evolution doesn't care whether you believe in it or not, no more than gravity does. I want to rekindle excitement over what we've achieved as a species with the space program. We can't afford to regress back to the days of superstition.
I've spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too.
I'd be lying if I said that any part of writing is easy for me, but I have always found that setting comes more naturally to me than, say, writing action scenes.
I know that any group of people can become a team if they do the right things, but I came to realize over time that if you acquire or develop the right kind of people, that process of building a team is going to be much more effective and easier.
Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally.
I'll often use my real stuff in my writing because it comes across as more authentic.
Here is a dirty little secret: Stock-picking is wildly overrated. Sure, it makes for great cocktail party chatter, and what is more fun than delving into a company's new products? But the truth is that individual stocks are riskier than broad indices.
I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.
As you get older, you treasure the beautiful things of the past but also see things more clearly.
I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.
As a bureaucracy becomes more established, it develops its own career structure. It is less dependent, and should be less dependent, on individual personalities. Absolutely no one is indispensable.
Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.
I'm just coming from a more personal - and, I guess, more nostalgic - point of view.
I don't think the entire world respects women in sport. But if FIFA start respecting the women's game more, others will follow.
I think there could be more experimentation if car companies didn't have to make such huge volumes. If you're making 300,000 vehicles, you have to play it safe. Ultimately, the companies want to make customized cars, and they are all working on ways to do that. Experiments with structural systems are usually about that.
I don't divide my reading into demographic categories, any more than I'd divide my friends into groups along ethnic or sexual lines. The thing I look for most is a sense of literary rawness - bareback fiction, if you will.
As I got more into gay rights, I got more into equal pay, and you just see that it's all connected. You can't really speak out on one thing and not another without it not being the full picture.
Grant us more powers, not less; grant us more democracy, not less; grant us the tools to move forward because, I can assure you, Puerto Rico will move forward. We did it in the past; we will do it again.
I have no problem with animals, I just like people more.
We know there are poets who are chosen: by what or whom, we no more know than what lies beyond our final breath, or what caused a certain action which resulted in the fulfillment or the desecration and collapse of what we most cared for in life.
God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
I assumed that 'Gone Girl' would do incrementally better than 'Dark Places,' and that would be great. So the fact that it did more than that was kind of an incredibly pleasant surprise.
Because I've been so bad at looking after myself, how would I ever look after a kid? But the old cliche applied: they handed her to me, and my world turned upside down - and I realised I was now going to be vulnerable in more ways than I expected.
I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.
