America's strength is not our diversity; our strength is our ability to unite people of different backgrounds around common principles. A common language is necessary to reach that goal.
But once I went for it, left my inhibitions aside and saw its eventual success, it made me much more comfortable and eager THIS time around to take it to a whole new level.
Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.
Each country thinks its school is in a specific crisis, without ever linking the school's crisis to that of the society around it.
The evidence that I see around me in society indicates that not only is thinking very much out of favor, but I'm not sure that the last couple of generations - Generation X and Generation Next, or whatever you want to call them - even know what a tho...
When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it.
It was actually pretty difficult to grow up in the Star City. There were regular kids around me, and everybody knew that my father was a cosmonaut. Even at school, every teacher could comment on my behavior just because I was considered special.
Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that's odd, but I think it's odd if artists aren't interested in the world around them. I'm always chasing that.
Most people are really stunned to find out that the technology has been around for more than 100 years, and that the diesel engine was in fact invented to run on vegetable oil.
Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.
I'm pretty grounded on my own passion - writing books, you know, doing programs, speaking around the country. And I love what I do.
You always hear actresses talk about how unromantic it is to act a love scene or a sex scene - which it is. You're doing it with all these lights on and cameras flying around and people on the set.
I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
I actually only started listening to house music around the time I started making it. I got hooked both to making music and to house music.
What I like to do when I get to a new place is buy local music early on and listen to it while we're driving around. I think it helps explain and illuminate the culture of where you are if local music is playing.
I don't go around, the way many musicians do, with earbuds in my ear listening to my iPod all day and just sticking my head in the music all the time.
I meet people every single day who have heard the music and incorporated it into their lives. I feel like I have a tribe all around the world.
L.A. was just an inspiring kind of place to be. It felt like going to Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. Everybody's there. Everybody's hanging around. Everybody's talking about music.
Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.
I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.
My interest in his new toy, the Theremin, isn't very big. It simply does not fit into my way of playing music. I do not want to fiddle around with my hands in the air.
