If we don't figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, we're not going to survive as a productive and healthy society.
We played in Texas about a year ago, at Emo's, the famous country and western club in Austin. And I figured, well, if I'm finally gonna die onstage, that's where it's going to be!
I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.
Nationalist, anti-European, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim public political figures, seem a worrying picture of a possible European future. We could still fall back into pre-Europe... and it worries me.
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.
I remember seeing McCoy Tyner in concert, and thinking that the music was incredible, but wanting to be invited in. I figured that humor was the way of letting the audience in. I've gotten a hard time about it, but I love to be funny onstage.
On 'The Simpsons,' I will say that we definitely like to comment on what's going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we've gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.
Abraham is such a fascinating figure. Three world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all claim him as a patriarch. He was raised in a religious home. And yet he rejected religion in order to pursue a personal relationship with God.
It is our responsibility to find God in someone who is different from us. I think that God basically says, 'I created diversity on purpose, and it is your responsibility to figure out how to make it work.'
That satisfied me until I began to figure that if God loved all his children equally, why did he bother about my red hat and let other people lose their fathers and mothers for always?
There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God's counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can't do it myself, I don't deserve to get it.
We all need to figure out what's right for us because nothing about life is one size fits all. Even for an Olympian, that's for sure. And such discovery starts with you paying attention - to yourself.
I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?
My maternal grandmother, Penelope, was a very big figure in my life. She was a child of the Raj, born in India, a debutante who hobnobbed with royals, then married a Canadian, Bill Aitken, who became MP for Bury St Edmunds.
Lyrically, I think I'm frustrated with this whole process of trying to figure out what I believe about the world and life. I don't like to adopt a sort of guiding philosophy.
I would say I'm quite happy in my life the majority of the time. Earlier in my life I was more questioning, overly trying to figure things out. I like this way much better.
This girl at 17 really led an army, this girl at 19 really burned at the stake by her own choice. And you sit there and you want to figure out why did she make these choices? How did she live such a life?
As a senior in high school, you figure out what you want to do with your life. I asked myself if I wanted to get back into acting and thought: 'Yes, but under my own terms and nothing like it was before.'
One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own ...
Things that I consider bad qualities, I always try and figure out where they are coming from. I don't consider ambition to be a bad one. It's served me very well in my life. Very well.
