I would sit in my room and become hysterical about the wild incredible story I was writing. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American black...
Chris Hedges said that Michael Jackson's memorial service was a variety show with a coffin, that MJ transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no ...
Americans are very big about loving the dog first, so when you tell them you have to set rules and limitations, a lot of people believe it's going to hurt their feelings. They're actually looking for you to be the pack leader.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with jou...
We owe each other a debt and we owe each other an obligation, and because of these fundamental American imperatives, there are things that we own in common with each other, and that we are obliged to protect for our posterity. The water. The trees. T...
There were many women in the Soviet scientific community, proportionately more so than in the United States. But they tended to occupy menial middle-level positions, and male Soviet scientists, like their American counterparts, were puzzled about a p...
Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but write it in such a way that American's youth can identify and slurp along with the Boss. Hail the Boss! Hail 7-11!
As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.
I've said no to 'Celebrity Big Brother,' 'Strictly,' and the American one, 'Dancing With The Stars.' I don't feel it's right for me. I've been asked to do reality TV a zillion times. No way. No way. Nobody's going to get into my living room and see m...
I grew up in Houston, and I remember we had separate drinking fountains, and black people sat in the balcony of the theater... We had an African-American housekeeper growing up who was really like my second mother. I thought it was silly - hatred jus...
The idea that you can live off the grid and just do your own thing is a very American idea - that you should be able to do your own thing, if you want to, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I think the price has gotten higher and higher.
People ask if I miss it, but they don't understand that American culture is so ubiquitous that there's nothing to miss. I don't see myself moving back. It's not that I hate the United States. I just always thought it would be a shame not to live in a...
(Patrick) Henry rightly understood that the moral condition of the American people was a direct product of their religious faith, and that politics and morality were inevitably intertwined. Thus, the political structure ultimately rested on a religio...
The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens - raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized a...
Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let '...
We say it’s a modern American Western - two gunslingers who ride into town, fight the bad guys, kiss the girl and ride out into the sunset again. And we were always talking from the very beginning that if you’re going to have cowboys, they need a...
I have a lot of influences. I'm American-schooled. I'm classically trained. I'm a pretty universal student, if you will. I have a lot of degrees, which really don't pay the rent. I have two doctorate degrees, I have a bachelor's degree, but I'm still...
There have been, in recent years, many Asian American pioneers in the public eye who've defied the condescendingly complimentary 'model minority' stereotype: actors like Lucy Liu, artists like Maya Lin, moguls like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. They are kno...
And by the way, a piece of news, Israel is the one country in which everyone is pro-American, opposition and coalition alike. And I represent the entire people of Israel who say, 'Thank you, America.' And we're friends of America, and we're the only ...
I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who've lost their homes, and ...
Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our ...
