I live in New York, and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage, I feel relief; in our urban environment, other animals are dying out.
Well, filming in Hawaii, you know, is a blessing. It's one of the most beautiful places on this planet. It has a very mystic energy which informs you as an actor.
The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.
The nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.
I think the state opening of Parliament is an incredibly important occasion, and broadly speaking, the way in which it's done is an invaluable tradition.
The thing is, 'Discworld' had been going on for a very long time, and I've written children's books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I'd do is I'd franchise it to myself.
When your child stops breathing 60 times a night, you don't worry about what's going on next year or even next week. You put aside thoughts about which preschool you're going to enroll him in and focus on how he's doing right now. It's not the Norman Rockwell relationship that you sign on for when becoming a parent.
If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.
When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
Our appreciation of folk art will strengthen our identities, our pride in belonging to a community. People trained in the creative use of their hands soon acquire skills, excellent craftsmanship which will be the most important measure of how well we can industrialize.
America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
One of the big changes at the heart of Web 2.0 is the shift from the creation of software artifacts, which is what the PC revolution was about, to the creation of software services. These are services that ultimately, if they are successful, will require competencies of operation, of scale, and the like.
Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members.
We live in an era of mind-blowing scientific discovery, virtually none of which ever makes the front page, even as every trivial twist and turn in the rococo political drama has a secure place as the lead story.
I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.
Israel welcomes the wind of change, and sees a window of opportunity. Democratic and science-based economies by nature desire peace. Israel does not want to be an island of affluence in an ocean of poverty. Improvements in our neighbours' lives mean improvements to the neighbourhood in which we live.
Israeli ingenuity was never more evident than in the Ayalon bullet factory built during the British occupation of Palestine. It was constructed underneath an urban kibbutz. The workers had a bakery and laundry which provided constant clatter to disguise the work carried on below ground.
I'd love for there to be a situation - a world in which that's just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers - different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors - and our work can be taken on its own terms. I'm really looking forward to that day.
My paintings are very strange - large and empty, like walls. Just the opposite of my writing, which is rich and juicy.
Zero-length arrays are useful only in cases where you have a large structure, which contains a field of dynamic length, and you need to share that structure across program or even computer boundaries.
Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond.
People do look at it as an insult that I say I don't listen to country music, which cracks me up.
Silicon Valley tends to be very myopic - to be focused on one or two things - which has some strengths as well as weaknesses.
The function of the killer and watching him - whatever that says about the world in which we live - it was always more about that world than it was about the actual watching.
My favorite book is 'Million-Dollar Throw.' It's about football, which is one of the main things I like watching and reading about.
We must never stop fighting for a vision of American democracy in which we strive for and encourage the highest levels of voter turnout and participation.
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
There is nothing in this world which men desire and struggle for, and that is good for them, of which there is not enough for everybody.
It sometimes seems easier to trace the great general laws of God's government in the passage of events far from us than in those close around us. We see the shape of those far-off constellations, but we cannot group or set in order that to which our own sun belongs.
I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.
The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.
It's great to listen to men talk about sports or fights or war or even hunting sometimes, but the presence of the other, the presence of art and beauty, which crude masculinity seems to discount, is essential. Real civilization and real manhood seem to me to include those.
It's the sum of the parts that make up the whole, so in my opinion excellence comes from how one undertakes to do something. It all begins with the thought process - which is creative and exalted to produce something out of the ordinary.
The mind is a monkey, hopping around from thought to thought, image to image. Rarely do more than a few seconds go by in which the mind can remain single-pointed, empty.
