If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he'd feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own...
My first real kiss came when I was 10, and it was in an acting class. I had to do a scene from a movie where someone gets kissed under a tree, and I did not want to do it! But my acting partner wanted me to feel comfortable, so he bought a picnic bas...
Our decisions define our lives. We are the people we choose to be in the ways that most matter. Choose wisely. You will live with the choices you make. The choices you make define your character. And your character defines how you feel about yourself...
I'm a Conservative, but I talk for the ordinary working classes. I get on with the boys at the pub, but I can also mix with Prince Andrew. I understand both levels. The toffs haven't lived in council estates; they've just known big mansions. How can ...
now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perha...
Generalization is the biggest challenge that must be dealt with if we are to create spaces for constructive dialogue where muslims feel they are welcomed. This is equally true with regards to Westerners! Not all Westerners are against muslims, and no...
However, by Sunday noon--not coincidentally, the unhappiest hour in America--you may have run through your options and wind up slumped on a couch, suffering from the Sabbath existential crisis. It's at just such unfocused, unproductive times, says Cs...
Is there any forgiveness? If somebody does something wrong, we now have copped this "off with the head" attitude, which, I confess, feels great sometimes, but come on. Why do we paint everyone with the same brush? Why does it seem more & more we want...
Be in beta. Do things badly. Abandon perfectionism. Following this advice can seem nearly impossible when pitted against our identity. But when we allow ourselves to go into the rapid iteration of trial and error, like a child learning to walk, the f...
On the one hand I follow a vocation because I have an ability that I should exercise, but I want to use it for a reason, because I don't see that the freedoms that I enjoy are God-given realities. So I have a very healthy, activist general tension in...
I have learned from the first Olympics, of course. When I went to my first Olympic Games, I experienced all of the pressure and was able to win the gold medal. I try not to feel the pressure, and I try not to be nervous when I am on the ice and when ...
When I was young, I had this feeling that there was this handbook that I had never gotten that explained how to be, how to laugh, what to wear, how to stand by yourself in the hallway. Everyone looked so natural - like they all practiced and knew exa...
We are against ignorance. We feel that you have to educate yourself, no matter what the situation is. People who refuse to educate themselves - people who refuse to find out what something is about, that they're frightened of - find comfort in being ...
It's very important to take risks. I think that research is very important, but in the end you have to work from your instinct and feeling and take those risks and be fearless. When I hear a company is being run by a team, my heart sinks, because you...
As soon as I start reading, drawing comes to me more easily. I find I work in my sketchbooks more. But if I'm working on a new show, my reading completely stops except when I'm on a plane. I take a stack of New Yorkers with me. I feel awful about tho...
I like to take on the thing I don't like at the moment. I like to find something that looks wrong or feels off, something that I would never have done in the past, like brocade. And then all of a sudden, if we can make brocade work, then we've really...
I used to work in kitchens, doing 12 or more hours a day of physical labor, so today, eight to 12 hours of cooking, chatting or filming feels like a vacation. When I have a scheduled 'day off,' I spend several hours writing, then I clean until I cras...
There's so much bullying with young people and them feeling like they can't come out, and they don't know what to do. And it's something that you have to work through. And, you know, for me, it was - I came out, and then I went back in for a minute. ...
Anybody can have this body if you do enough sit-ups and you just make a decision that 'Every day, I'm going to work out.' There are some days that I just don't feel like doing it, and I don't. But more often than not I get up and I get on the treadmi...
I have a graduate degree from Penn State. I studied at Penn State under a noted Hemingway scholar, Philip Young. I had an interest in thrillers, and it occurred to me that Hemingway wrote many action scenes: the war scenes in 'A Farewell to Arms' and...
Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn't spread to his eyes, which look less tense and wor...
