I'm a happy person. Sometimes, I have to make a conscious effort to stay happy. See, my predispositions are - as opposed to what you see - I'm actually quite a sensitive person, very empathetic, very emotional... Very impulsive.
Geo-stationary orbit is actually real estate - you can only put so many satellites up there. It's like waterfront property at the beach. Everyone builds the biggest thing they can put up there.
When Obamacare actually kicked in, just as we knew, if you liked your insurance, as I did - I had a health savings account - then I wasn't going to be able to keep it because it doesn't meet the requirements.
I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.
I started writing poems on a Xanga page. I always loved writing. I also had a Deviant Art page, actually, because my crush had one, too.
I'd like to be the commissioner of tennis, but do I want to get into politics? Sometimes I have delusions of grandeur that that would be an interesting, good thing. I'm talking about actual politics, like being a congressman, but then I see how unbelievably nasty it really is, and maybe I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to actually do it.
I always make a distinction between nostalgia and sentimentality. Nostalgia is genuine - you mourn things that actually happened.
I don't actually think I'm treated unfairly or anything. If anything, I sometimes can't understand why I don't see myself and the people I know represented more in films. Unless I'm going to go out and write them myself, I don't feel like I can really complain about it.
It's actually difficult to know what anyone wants these days. Tastes seem to change so quickly nowadays depending on the latest blog. The latest Facebook page. Twitter is somewhat important in telling you what you should want.
I think serious situations actually make for the best kind of belly laughs. But they're also the hardest to convert into comedy at the outset.
Superman tends to stand very upright, and he's very symmetrical, and those are actually the most difficult poses for me to draw.
In a way, 'On the Road's greatest victory is that nobody's eyes will be opened any longer by reading it; the last time I met any young people who were actually 'on the road' was when I covered Occupy St. Louis. Those few, dirty kids were fighting a battle even they couldn't articulate.
The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they're actually going.
A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time. We congratulate a rival on a triumph when actually we are choking on spite. We are cordial and attentive to crashing bores.
I'm actually pretty frugal with my money.
I have a couple of things I do to clear my head when I need it. The first is exercise, the kind of exercise that makes me lie on the floor afterward gasping for breath and wonder if I'm actually going to be able to breathe enough to not die. The other one is playing music.
As 'Austrian' business cycle theory has pointed out, any bank credit inflation sets up conditions for boom-and-bust; there is no need for prices actually to rise.
What I would argue in my defence is that shows like 'Britain's Got Talent' and 'The X Factor' have actually got people more interested in music again and are sending more people into record stores.
I actually prepared Vice President Biden for his debate in the last election. I played Sarah Palin. It's a little tough debating a woman.
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
I was having an argument with my stepfather, and he was like, 'Why don't you join the Marine Corps?' And I was like, 'Noooo! Well, maybe, actually... ' I went and saw the recruiter, who was like, 'Are you on the run from the cops? Because we've never had someone want to leave so fast.'
It was actually after I saw 'Pinocchio' that I thought I might try and work in that industry in some way.
I do my best stuff midmorning and superlate at night, from 1 to 5 in the morning. Some people don't need sleep. I actually do need sleep. I just sleep all the time. I'll catch naps in the afternoon, or I'll take a 20-minute snooze in the office - just all the time. Our business is 24 hours. Our guys in Europe come online at midnight.
I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.
I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called 'Sukiyaki,' which is a very famous Japanese song, and I've actually heard from people that they've been in bars in Asia where they've seen me come up in the 'Sukiyaki' video that they play behind you. I'm in that. I'm in a karaoke video.
Without sounding overly pompous about it, I don't really trust certainty in anything, actually. Especially as I get older. Except love. I'm certain of love, I guess.
I would say I've actually done a lot more comedy than I've done drama. It's weird the way that worked out, because when I came out of theater school I took myself way too seriously, so it's kind of ironic that I ended up sort of going down the comedy path.
My motivation is paying the mortgage. No joke. Honestly. I still suffer with nerves and think, 'Why am I putting myself through this torture?' It's not actually the love of winning - it's that building of a partnership with a horse. Just riding horses every day keeps me going. And that threat of losing the mortgage.
I think if a poet wanted to lead, he or she would want the message to be unequivocally clear and free of ambiguity. Whereas poetry is actually the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.
Both of my parents are actually music teachers.
There was a Gallup poll that said something like 70 percent of people in the United States do not enjoy their job - they work to put food on the table and get insurance to survive. So, what happens when technology can do all that work for us and allow us to actually do what we enjoy with our time?
I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn't complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don't have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That's hard.
I love stories that exist in this amped-up, personal world - sort of like 'Pee-wee's Big Holiday,' actually. That world really only exists inside that movie, but what a wonderful little world it is.
I love finding out why people don't love things. And if you ask people why they don't like things, particularly when they get into this sort of culture box, you find out that they're not liking things because of what people are going to think about them, and not because of what the things actually sound like.
There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, and I always hoped I was related, but I wasn't. He was a steel magnate. He worked for J.P. Morgan; then he started Bethlehem Steel. But he had no children, unfortunately, and it turned out I wasn't a relative.
I want to go to Jamaica, actually. My whole family's from there, so I'd like to go there.
