If you could train an AI to be a Buddhist, it would probably be pretty good.
People in my hometown voted for President Reagan - for many, like my grandpa, he was their first Republican - because he promised that tax cuts would bring higher wages and new jobs. It seemed he was right, so we voted for the next Republican promising tax cuts and job creation, George W. Bush. He wasn't right.
I wanted to do Dreamgirls. If they're doing a stage production of Sparkle, I think that would be hot.
The founding generation would be amazed. It would be surprised. I think it would be very impressed by what has happened since then in terms of our exploding population; in terms of the success of this country economically and otherwise.
Well people often ask me how I felt growing up with a father who was a politician and who was often away. But when I'm asked that question I often reflect on my inability really to be able to answer it in any relative sense because I never grew up with a father doing anything else. So I just have no idea what it would be like otherwise.
Save for thee and thy lessons, man in society would everywhere sink into a sad compound of the fiend and the wild beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a moral as a natural wilderness.
The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.
I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He'd just pick up the couch and walk out of the room.
As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesn't work for me. I'd just rather sit at home and read, or go out to dinner with someone, or talk to someone I love, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh.
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist.
I don't want to do an action movie, because I've acted in them, and they're so boring to do, because they're so technical. The headache of that is daunting. But, if it were an action movie with really interesting characters, how great would that be?
We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.
The whole concept behind 'Forty Chances' is really a mindset: If everybody thought they had to put themselves out of business in 40 years, you had 40 chances to succeed in what your primary goals are, you would probably be more urgent and you would be forced to change quicker.
I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.
Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.
I'm just a giddy teenager who would like to break into show business any way I can.
I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer.
This is going to sound strange, but I really didn't think I would pass 30. I don't know why or whatever, I just didn't. That's a very weird thing to say, I'm sorry. I don't know. Maybe it's because I was drinking so much as a youth.
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
He was not a runner, my father, but he was quick. I always remember it was very difficult to escape from him when he was angry. If he wanted to beat us he would always catch us. Even me, he could always catch me.
Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.
I would have to have people totally committed to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of this United States. And many of the Muslims, they are not totally dedicated to this country. They are not dedicated to our Constitution. Many of them are trying to force Sharia law on the people of this country.
If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.
I didn't have any pedigree or any last name that would get me an opportunity to get looked at by WWE.
I never thought I would see a free South Sudan.
I was a student at Columbia College, actually, in the Architecture school. Paul would drive in from Queens, showing me these new songs. I can't remember us working it out.
Senator McCain is Israel's most unconditional ally in Mossad's machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State, which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations.
I would love to be in musical theater and be on Broadway. If someone were to offer me a position to do something like that, I wouldnt pass it down. Im a huge fan of musicals and I really want to do that.
It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so, not negative, but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around.
I was gaining weight very rapidly and read about the idea of restricting carbohydrates as an alternative to going hungry. I had a big appetite, so that was the only thing I would even consider.
The deal we made was that if we would change our law to invite them to come to South Dakota - that's what they wanted, the invitation - if we would change our law to invite them to come to South Dakota, he would guarantee South Dakota 400 Citibank jobs.
We got more provisions for our whiskey than the same money, which we paid for the liquor, would have bought; so after all it proved a very profitable investment.
I would wake up in Moscow or somewhere else, my heart beating fast, feeling bitter and helpless.
While they would have provided financial support if I had needed it, the greatest support my parents gave was emotional, psychological.
I don't see as many movies as I used to. Or, I should say, as many movies as I would like to.
I would have loved to have met Marilyn Monroe and have dinner with her.
