And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go.
If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out.
Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.
Earlier, looking lighter or slimmer never mattered to me. Frankly, I didn't care. I had more important things to do. But when I figured that it's not that hard, and I have the time, passion and patience to take it up, I jumped onto the health-wagon. I started working out.
I learned quickly at Columbia that the only eye that mattered was the one on the camera.
Our founders said that everybody mattered, everybody counted. But we all know that they didn't count everybody at the beginning. They did somehow have confidence that each generation of Americans would do a better job with it and would bring more and more people in from the margins and into the heart and soul of our democracy.
I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell... who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.
There was a time when being loaded and loved and popular really mattered a lot to me. I'd say that when I was less popular, I learned to be happy without those things.
I don't believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.
There's so many things that mattered so much in my 20s and 30s that don't matter now.
Go and experience life the way that someone else might experience it. Maybe you'll find meaning in a different corner of your brain. The fact that it changed doesn't negate the fact that it ever mattered.
Lester is the Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing can rattle him. I am not. I was always flying off the handle about things. And the one person who could calm me down and make me realize that none of this silliness mattered was Lester Holt.
I know seeing bigger women looking great would have mattered to me when I was younger - that's why I try not to wear a black dress every day.
Just as much as the United States mattered to cotton, cotton mattered to the United States. Cotton reinvigorated slavery, established the young nation's place in the global economy, and eventually helped create the political and economic conflicts that resulted in civil war.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
I was so dedicated to generating income to keep my family housed and clothed and schooled. That mattered to me. And playing good golf mattered to me. The rest of the things, like how my record stacked up against others, never made that much difference.
What mattered about Alan Kurdi's photograph was that it made Canadians very angry, and the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats ended up competing with each other over which party was offering the most generous refugee policy.
I owe a lot to my time on 'House of Cards' because, up until I booked that show, I had been working consistently for 12 years, but I wasn't working on anything that mattered in the way 'House of Cards' did to its audience, to casting directors, to directors and producers. The show hit this sweet spot.
A British director directed 'American Beauty,' an important film about American life, and it didn't matter. What only mattered was everyone's sensibility.
