We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.
There's a need to dig up the past and analyze it.
One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.
I like to get on the court three hours before the game. That way, I can get out of everybody's way, and I can do what I need to do for me and get up the shots that I need and then be in the locker room and getting my stuff taken care of physically - if I need treatment or whatever may be.
I've done quite a lot of growing up in public, which has been tricky at times.
I love Louisiana. There's no place on earth like Louisiana, and there's no city on earth like New Orleans. I grew up in Baton Rouge.
When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.
Obama is a great leader. He can fire people up and get them to do what he wants.
Americans who have parents raised during the Great Depression or World War II understand how drastically things have changed on the home front. My father did not care a whit whether I liked him, and it would have been unthinkable for him to pick up my stuff. There were rules in the house, and they were enforced.
I think 'House of Night' blew up the way it did because it offered so many people a fantasy that they can be... vampires are very alluring.
In a nutshell though, it's just all about opening up to the people that really care about my career and really listening to everybody who is listening to me. It's just made me stronger, to really be able to open up that door and listen to everybody else's opinions.
I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point.
God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.
I think I used comedy as a mechanism: if I could make the other kids laugh, I wouldn't get beaten up or teased as much.
It was everyone going up there to swing for the fences, because the home runs were what would get them on 'SportsCenter.' That really changed the mindset of the players.
Sometimes you have to suck it up and call a number.
I love the architecture magazines and all of the French magazines for decoration or whatever. I end up enjoying them more sometimes than the fashion magazines.
Growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was more famous than John Wayne to some of us. I knew him. I worked with him on a low budget film years ago, and we'd sit around at night while waiting for a shot.
I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.
I like poems that inspire, that make us think and reflect. It's like putting love into the world for whoever picks it up.
Obviously, the anti-ERA people are tickled about my ordeal because it proves that the ERA breaks up families. When they point out that feminism is a dangerous thing, I just say marriage is pretty precarious too.
The Internet is a whole new world opening up.
Generally speaking, I'm a jeans, T-shirt and boots man but I do own an Armani suit, which gets a regular outing. It's nothing fancy - just a classic, well-cut suit with clean lines and beautiful tailoring. It's timeless and you can mix and match it with anything to dress up or dress down.
Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.
I grew up in Canada and was a huge Spider-Man fan, and never thought of Spider-Man as an American hero.
I am quite an early riser - I usually get up between 5.30 and 6am and take the dogs out.
Growing up, nobody I knew even knew a writer. So it was a big adventure and something that I've wrestled with my whole life. I think it's a journey worth taking, really finding out who you are and what you do well.
I would just randomly blurt out things like, 'What if a man showed up today and was carrying an umbrella, but it wasn't raining?' Eventually, people started to call me weird.
I think that the more comfortable and the more you rehearse - granted, I don't like to take the air out of a tire; there is a fine line - but I think the freer you are with your dialogue, for example, the more open you are to a good idea walking up to you.
I was a crazy little seven-year-old. I used to get up an hour early to watch the big kids train. I thought, 'I must absorb their awesomeness.' That was my goal from when I was seven. I told my coach, 'I'm going to the Olympics.'
I feel like until you're with the person, the person you end up marrying, you don't ever really know what you're looking for. I'm just into a girl with a really good personality, something that goes beyond looks. I want to be able to joke around, be respectful of each other... there are a lot of things that go into compatibility.
You know we are flawed people, so if someone is going to make a movie about me, they don't have to make it up. My real flaws are much funnier.
When the audition for 'Cats' came up, even though I'd been making pop records, it felt like something I was attracted to.
One of the things I've had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.
At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.
Hip hop classes and ballet are what I've been keeping up with, and of course my usual abdominal workout, which consists of 500 sit-ups a session. Or I take a 30-minute abs class at my gym. But dance classes are a full-body cardio workout, which always brings me success and keeps me feeling great.
