When I look back at my career and my life and how much I have learnt, I feel blessed with what I have. I have stopped fighting with myself.
I look back, and I have no regrets, truly. Everything led me to the place where I am now.
So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you - and fight alongside you - until the job is done. Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.
I've put my life back together, but it's all a growing process and that's neat, too, because if you stop growing, what good is it musically? So that is what I am looking forward to - growing. In some ways, I felt stagnant in my life and it showed.
But unfortunately, in my unrelenting drive to get back on that drum stool, the major casualty in all of it was that I really forgot about me.
Films exhaust me, they do, and I often want nothing more to do with them, but I'm continually surprised at the resurgence of the impulse to come back and do it all over again.
When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.
I'd spent 25 years in government when I left the Defense Department back in '93, decided I'd go spend the rest of my career in the private sector, and then the president tapped me to come be his running mate. And it's been a remarkable experience. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
For a long time, our only mode of travel was an Econoline van. Eleven of us, with nine sleeping in the back on two mattresses.
It's particularly hard to take being stabbed in the back close to home. There's always a feeling of betrayal when people of your own group oppose you.
It took a long time, but I have learned that you just can't take anything you want out of life without putting something back in exchange.
Before coming here I had a minor back problem and I thought whenever I play Pakistan I get a back problem.
The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark.
When I was young, I was too slow. I thought I must learn to run fast by practicing to run fast, so I ran 100 meters fast 20 times. Then I came back, slow, slow, slow.
I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.
If I had not actually got into this work and been called of God, I would back out. But I cannot back out: I have no doubt of the truth.
Such a gift might be easily taken back again.
When you borrow money, you should always think how you're going to pay it back.
Keep your word. Honor commitments, and they will double back to honor you.
You learn your text and have it in the back of your head, without a thought as to how you're going to say it.
On Monday I come in and get in a full body workout, and then I come back in on Wednesday and do a quick six, which consists of bench press, biceps and triceps curls, pull downs, something for the back and the neck. And then you come back and hit it again on Friday with a 16-machine workout.
Christianity emerged from the religion of Israel. Or rather, it has as its background a persistent strain in that religion. To that strain Christians have looked back, and rightly, as the preparation in history for their faith.
I get to office early at about 8 A.M., and I'm back home by 6 to write.
I can talk to my dad like he's my manager, and put 'Dad' on the back burner. We've been doing it since I was 13.
People's backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to railways are public benefactors.
As any of us approaches middle age, we inevitably come up against our limitations: the realization that certain dearly-held fantasies may not be realized; that circumstances have thwarted us; that even with intention and will we may not be able to set our ship back on the course we'd planned.
It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.
When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective.
In soaps, people come back from the dead all the time, to the point where death is just a bus stop.
Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.
You sometimes get the feeling that people think getting back together after a hiatus to write and record a record is work, you know, arduous and unpleasant. Being able to write and record - that's a privilege. I don't forget the long days I spent working in a restaurant, when I wanted to be done so I could go home and work on a song.
I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone.
I guess the way to keep a grip on reality is just to take breaks in between albums like most normal bands do. Go home and be a person and hang out with your friends. Do separate things and get back to earth and write songs and go out there again.
When I look back on my twenties, I just remember being afraid of everything, and in my thirties, I'm actually excited by things. And if things don't work out, you know, by the time you've hit your thirties, you've had your fair share of disappointments.
When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.
I mainly cook British food with a few things I've had on my holidays. I went to the Canary Islands a few years ago, and we had all sorts of different mushrooms on brioche with pancetta on top, and it was delicious. I had it most days for lunch, so I thought, 'I'll do that when I get back,' and now it's in my cookbook, an absolute favourite.
