When I was seven months pregnant with my son, my mother and I took a trip to El Salvador, where she's from. Frequent visits with her to see my extended family have taught me how different life can be if you are born into poverty.
The initial attraction of a political convention was that often the outcome was not preordained. There was at least some element of surprise. But, now it's like tuning in to a movie where you already know the plot and the ending. It's just not that interesting.
I have always found the baptism of Jesus, with a dove descending and voice from Heaven, one of the great moments in the Jesus story. This is where Jesus hears the deep call from God.
Laos is a country where everything is eaten. When I came back, I would find myself chopping parsley and thinking: 'Why am I throwing these stems away? They're perfectly edible.'
I love to eat, I love to feed people, and I'm a great cook. I joked with my friends that I wanted to write a book where desserts had to be extensively researched, since I have a terrible sweet tooth. My particular downfall is cake.
It's one thing to be writing in South or Latin America, where, except for Brazil, every country, however small and hard to find on a map, speaks Spanish, but quite another to be writing in, say, Hungary, a landlocked nation of 10 million people, with a language that very few people outside Hungary can read or speak.
I mean, in 'Big' and 'Pleasantville,' it's a journey that the characters go on where I think they come to kind of meet themselves at the end and who they actually are and give full voice to who they actually are. And that, you know, obviously fascinates me for some reason. Maybe I didn't adequately grow up.
There's a game called Checkout where there's grocery items and it's how much you think the manufacturer's suggested retail price is and we add up your total, then your total has to be within $2 of the regular total. I don't think I could ever win that game.
People are getting cynical about the news. It doesn't seem like there's one place to watch where you get the straight dope. You watch the channel that proves your point.
I guess YouTube is the new destination spot for music videos. That's where I go.
You shouldn't be trying to create a system where no bank fails, but you should be creating one that catches a bank and allows it to fail without impacting the financial markets.
I am a good wife, so I think we need to live where my husband is working.
My parents aren't crazy conservative. They're actually pretty open-minded. But my grandparents are, and where I'm from, East Texas, is the Bible Belt.
I wanted to do something where I could hang my hat.
I love work where I can find out more about the world and its history.
I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly.
I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.
Americans should not have to wonder if their government is actively looking to subvert them or their political views. We live in a nation where respect for differing beliefs and a vibrant political discourse play an important role in shaping our government.
I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.
We now live in the era of fake consensus, or phoney populism, a condition in which galleries and homes are seen to succeed best where they manage feelings of non-difference.
'Magic Mike' is about guys learning that sometimes you can't control your life; you have to trust your intentions and instincts and let the road take you where it wants to go. It's about trusting that things will make sense when you look back, not when you look forward.
An oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household... carries discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.
The reason I decided to become a solo artist in the first place was because I always felt that the results that I got from working as a team where everyone had equal say... ended up with compromised, watered-down results.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
The customer wants what the customer wants - when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it. And if you want to build a big business, and you want to be meaningful to a big, broad group of customers, you need to think about how you're going to meet them in the various places where they might expect to see you.
One thing that's unique to 'Uncharted' is something called 'chasing picture,' where Naughty Dog run a section of gameplay and I'm allowed to ad-lib over it. We call it 'panning for gold.'
I grew up in an agricultural family, and I never distanced myself from where the food comes from. I think it's quite natural.
As a man of colour, I've spent my life asking people to see me for who I am. With Obama in the White House, it feels like people have finally caught up to where I've been most of my life.
I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumulate superstitions.
Taking care of our families isn't just about putting food on the table today. It's about ensuring that our children and grandchildren will have a habitable world where they can get to know various species of sea turtles.
I believe it was probably less than ten minutes that went by from the invention of photography to the point where people realized that they could lie with photographs.
As an actor, I'm familiar with having bursts of energy, where you're giving things a try, and then you have down time.
We're seeing a new 'Gilded Age,' where inheritance is a deciding factor in who becomes the wealthiest.
I feel like I'm a product of this generation where everybody listens to charts with diverse music.
I was a hyper kid, so I didn't want to play baseball and wait for the ball to come to me. I wanted to play a sport where I could go get the ball.
I don't think Iraq could be transformed overnight into a democracy. How can you take a country that doesn't have any kind of tradition of democracy, where its people have been brutalized and repressed for decades, and suddenly impose Jeffersonian ideals?
