How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at th...
I just got on Twitter because there was some MTV film blog that quoted me on something really innocuous that I supposedly said on Twitter before I was even on Twitter. So then I had to get on Twitter to say: 'This is me. I'm on Twitter. If there's so...
When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of yo...
The mall tour was right off of my second record, before it came out. It was very different. I did an acoustic performance every day in a different mall! One interesting thing I remember is playing 'My Happy Ending' a lot, and that song was so new tha...
The dog leash was still tied tight around the oak tree in the back, stretched worn and limp across the green grass as if trying to escape to freedom; and he buried his wife without a tombstone. Where before, she sat most times in his home, licking he...
I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight. I had stood frozen on pitches, done some running about and shouted a lot, as though I cared.
Long before I was a writer, when I was just a haphazard reader and a dreamer of stories, I learnt about an influential book by Harold Bloom. 'The Anxiety of Influence', published in 1973 when I was five years old, is taken up with the terrifying infl...
I think I've been addicted to openness since long before my rock career. I was terrible as a teenager. I used to go out of my way to make people uncomfortable with personal details. I was always fascinated by the idea that we have these weird, random...
The memoir industry is, what's the word? Under regulated. I think it needs to be pruned. If there are too many books right now and the market for readers is shrinking, I think we can get rid of many of the memoirs. Another memoir should be awfully we...
Einstein wrestled with a problem back before we even knew the universe was expanding, and he was looking for a way to keep the universe from collapsing. And so he discovered, in his theory of gravity, something like this dark energy - he called it a ...
Do you have to be like a second-grade dropout to be an umpire? Did you go to school until you were 8 years old? I think you quit school before you were 10. Stay in school kids or you'll end up being an umpire.
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will disc...
After 'Entourage,' it completely opened up my casting within the industry. People saw me for a lot of roles that I hadn't been seen for before. Older roles. I went out this pilot season for a lot of lawyers and doctors. And cops - which I haven't qui...
What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that t...
Failure people deal with life's disappointment whereas the real people ride on disappointment to take the best lesson out of it to understand the character of persons they had in their network then. Dealing is another term of striking compromises wit...
I never really wanted to be a writer. I know it sounds strange, but I honestly believe that I didn't pick the story; the story has picked me. I've written absolutely no fiction before 'The Immortals of Meluha.' Not even a short story in school - abso...
When we were doing 'Live at Benaroya,' the song 'I Will' was hard to get through. I've always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also 'Before It Breaks.' So I'm just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more diffic...
In New York, FEMA granted the Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club's request to be remapped from the high-risk flood zone in August 2012 - just two months before the club was damaged and its outbuildings destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, which stacked up yachts...
I've been offered political shows before, and I don't know anything about politics and I feel uncomfortable making political opinions - there's consequences to them. I often think I'm wrong, so I really don't like getting in political or religious di...
In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and said exactly what she thought. Everyone's eyes we...
If you look at the 19 hijackers who came to the United States in Sept. 11 to commit those acts, if you'd looked at them before they got onto a plane, you could probably say the same thing. There were various levels of expertise, various levels of com...
