In these times - where social appearance is more important than spiritual substance - what has become our longing to change is really the unconscious desire to control not just the shape of our bodies (according to prevailing values) but to dominate our environment as well, regardless of the cost.
I think regardless of where people are from, country music is a through line.
My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I'm very 'preacher-ish' on stage, not by intent but because that's where I learned to talk in front of people.
I don't give any merit to criticism. 'Country Girls (Shake it for Me),' I can see where people view that as sexist, but I just view that as having fun.
I had a great season and truly enjoyed competing around the world - from Monaco, where I managed to establish a world record, to Beijing, where I finally captured my first world outdoor title.
The most entertaining songs don't always come from a nice place. In songs where I think I'm being really sensitive, they seem quite boring actually. I've found that the songs that come out of nastier, more misanthropic places are better.
There's discussion in athletics about how sport - where they say 'SportsCenter' has ruined the fundamentals of basketball because it's - it only applauds dunks and three point shots and blocks, and I think, you know, the cable news has done the same thing for politics.
We have this interesting problem with black holes. What is a black hole? It is a region of space where you have mass that's confined to zero volume, which means that the density is infinitely large, which means we have no way of describing, really, what a black hole is!
When it comes to reforming MPs' expenses, the answer is simply to keep it simple: show us receipts as they're claimed and, where there are abuses, enforce the law.
What's awesome about the Internet is how it breaks up monopolistic markets where middlemen unfairly gobble up outsized fees, leaving us little choice but to keep paying them.
Things don't weigh me down any more. I confront things, and I move on. I don't dwell on things; I don't let things simmer under the surface. I am where it starts and where it ends. I have the power in my life to be happy.
Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.
I come from an area where it's mostly, like, football and basketball, those are the sports. So my brother started surfing... I used to make fun of him for it, and then he challenged me to do it, and I'm a huge competitor, and I did it ,and I got hooked.
I really look up to writers who are able to write compressed, single-scene stories, where everything happens in a kitchen. But I just can't think that way. For me it would be impossible to write a story where I didn't know what someone's parents did and what their grandparents did and who they used to date.
Botox and other fillers make everybody look the same, with the big cheekbones where they fill you up. It's much cheaper to have a fringe - it takes years off everybody.
We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.
Rat Records in Camberwell is where most of my record collection has come from. It's like someone with my exact taste in music has handed them all their old vinyl.
I need to write a sitcom, but something with warmth, not one where the dad comes home and he's treated like an idiot.
I lived in a neighborhood where there weren't many kids. I had a couple sisters, but I was very much a loner. Whatever film I had seen that day or that week, I would completely find myself in that world.
When I'm dancing, I don't know where the confidence comes from, but I just pretend I'm someone else, I think, and then I go out and dance.
I was raised in a working class family of Baptist faith, and I went to college on a church scholarship where early teachings were reinforced. Abortion was wrong, I was taught.
Businesses will ultimately go where the markets and opportunities are.
We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.
There have been some terrible winters in Chicago, where it feels like I'm literally being punched in the face, and everyone walks around looking stunned like they've just witnessed a murder.
I believe the director's primary role is to create an atmosphere where his company can be created.
I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along - where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.
I think that there are a lot of really beautiful Christmas carols, and then sometimes there are horrible renditions of them that are played to death in malls that make me sad. I try to avoid stores where they're playing bad versions of Christmas songs on repeat.
In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for.
You make a product, and you put it out, and you do it with as much excellence and also wisdom as possible, and then it's the Lord that drives it and determines where it will go.
The vast majority of women who marry still take their husband's name. And I'm not vilifying that behavior! But that's a pattern where women are truly still taking on their husbands' identities.
In Detroit, in a city that in many cases the world has rejected, that's where God shows up. Every example in the Gospels where God shows up, it's always when the seas are the stormiest, where there is discontinuity.
We assume that we've come so far as compassionate citizens of the world if we do choose to read the news, yet the attitude towards life can be one where we put blinders on and forget that there are civil wars going on. It's easy to forget that there are so many people starving to death every single day.
I am grateful to have spent 25 years at the 'International Herald Tribune' - a newspaper where I had unstinting support in being able to express myself freely and honestly.
Scotland is a picturesque country where the people are friendly yet completely incomprehensible. Also, the national delicacy is a sheep's stomach filled with its liver, lungs, and heart.
We all, as actors, have to fight these battles, where it's like, 'OK, that's a little far-fetched.'
The thing about looking back over Clinton's presidency, and probably anybody's presidency, is that when you look back, the events all line up in a way that makes sense. At the time, you don't know where it's going.
