So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?
I hate it when people come up to me on trains and ask 'Are you Soulja Boy?' If people want pictures or autographs, that's cool, but I don't like the dumb questions.
Anytime you do something in this arena, whether it's public records or ethics, it's not like throwing a stone in a quiet pond. It's like throwing a boulder.
While therefore your tears flow, let a due proportion be tears of joy. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret: that there is sweetness at the bottom.
The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
I grew up at my grandmother's house, and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding, which is what you do when you're a kid. I loathe gardening, but I love gardens, and I have two beautiful gardens.
You don't have to agree with my vote, but you need to at least understand how I came to my vote.
My mom told me, 'Make sure you do everything you want to do before you have kids.' So that's what I was doing. But biologically, the body is just like, 'Well, you should have done it.'
Buy the best you can find or afford and don't over manipulate it. If I cook a scallop, the best praise you can give me is that it tastes like a scallop.
I am happy being able to play roles with people my age because once you do something really mature there is no turning back.
I started writing poems, and when I first tried prose, I wrote bad articles and essays and columns, and I didn't have a handle on it. I didn't go to a school that really taught you how to write that stuff.
Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.
There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.
White people use their literature to maintain culture. That's why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels.
I love travelling full stop - so while I've had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you're travelling - not when you're chained to your desk.
When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.
With a novel, you're the director and the screenwriter and everything else, except that you have to write it knowing it will all be performed inside the head of the reader. So it's a difficult and lonely task.
The one cool thing with getting older is that you can actively choose to just be an eccentric.
If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only will the North fight, but she will also triumph. The experiment of secession will fail, and the South, in ruin and desolation, will bitterly repent the day when she attempted to overthrow a wise and beneficent government.
You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them.
When I started my company in the U.S. I was always told by my mentors, 'If you want to start a tech company, you need a technical co-founder,' because outsourcing just doesn't work. It is too slow, it is too expensive, and the product is going to change a lot.
You can't move mountains by whispering at them.
It is unfortunate that people believe that in order to democratise something you have to get politicians out of the system.
When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.
I don't think you can approach any piece of art with boundaries or rules. I think respect is a very important thing, but I also think what we discover along the way is really important.
Music can lift the spirit; it can make you cry. Soldiers have marched into battle to music. It's a powerful thing.
If you want to get to the top, there's always the risk that it will isolate you from other people.
People ask me, 'Have you done much drag?' And I say, 'I don't think of it as drag. I'm playing a woman!'
The scary thing about the future... there will be tiny cameras everywhere, and they'll be flying around like mosquitoes and drones. That will be bad. Drones are scary. You can't reason with a drone.
Making promises and then saddling yourself with a political system and a political union that means that you cannot deliver those promises, I fear, doesn't contribute to an atmosphere of trust and confidence in politics.
When you're a black man in a hoodie, all of a sudden you're a criminal. That's something we shouldn't have to deal with, but we do. It's a double standard. We can't cover our head when it's cold and raining because God forbid someone sees us and puts our life in danger.
Real history is far more complex and interesting than the simplistic summaries presented in Wikipedia articles. Knowing this allows you to question received wisdom, to challenge 'facts' 'everybody' knows to be true, and to imagine worlds and characters worthy of our rich historical heritage and our complex selves.
You can lead a horse to water and you can even make it drink, but you can't make actresses wear what they don't want to wear.
It's way easier to write for other people. Yourself isn't in it. When you write for yourself, you overthink, and you become paranoid. When you write for others, it isn't about you.
I've definitely learned that if you really want something, just go for it, no matter how much it scares you.
When you feel moved by the story, you want to tell that story.
