When I was first approached about doing an autobiography, I said, 'absolutely not.' But when I sat down, memories came pouring out. It wrote very quickly - I think there was an emotional impulse, because once I started in, the story itself carried me...
I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor, I do a movie, that's the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great, at first, not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I w...
Before you rip off three feet of toilet paper, consider that each year 500,000 acres of virgin boreal forest in northern Alberta and Ontario are being clear-cut to make the stuff. These forests are home to some 500 First Nation communities, as well a...
When I finally finished the 'Two Suns' tour, which went on for quite a long time, I felt like a bit of a husk. And I remember thinking, 'I need to spend some time in one place, and just be at home.' So I guess the first year of that three and a half ...
Sometimes when I pick up a book off the shelf, when I'm buying a new book to read, I'll look at all of them and they all have the exact same words inside, but I'll think that one is meant to go home with me. I'll never pick the first thing off the sh...
Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being up...
Many Lexington natives believe they live in a special place, one impossible to leave. I'm not so sure about that - or it's more accurate to say I think a more general truth exists beneath it: the place you first call home stays with you always, wheth...
Here at home, President Obama early on made the connection between growth and economic opportunity for women. In the depths of our crisis in 2009, one of the first laws the president signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He established an Equa...
But, you know, I just did a big trip in the spring to Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, and that's when I bought a Kindle. I have like 15 books on this one little gizmo. But when I came home, the first night I picked up the book that was on my night...
I remember when TiVO first came out I was all about TiVo. I came home and that thing was frozen, and I thought 'This is awful. This is the end of the world'. Then I unplugged it, and I plugged it back in, and still frozen. It was paralyzing. I called...
A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape rec...
The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the ...
I walked across Tuscany from Siena to Rome, which was a lovely way to see the landscape. It was sunny but not too hot, and we made detours to look at treasures - churches, paintings, little hill villages. The first couple of days, you feel your knees...
On the first day of school, you got to be real careful where you sit. You walk into the classroom and just plunk your stuff down on any old desk, and the next thing you know the teacher is saying, 'I hope you all like where you're sitting, because th...
I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln - just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but wh...
Despite the fact that he has run the most incompetent administration in history, President Obama remains a solid bet for re-election in 2012. Obama's frontrunner status springs from two crucial facts: first, by overexposing himself in the public eye,...
One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby ...
What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just li...
I think we ought to all take a step back and remember where we were 24, 48 hours ago, a week ago, two weeks ago - the prospect that was hanging out there that America would not honor its obligations for the first time in its history, and the impact t...
In my own work, I'd say I'm a classicist, but I look everywhere for my solutions. I don't study the toilet-living habits of my clients, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. ...
Sending Paris Hilton to jail for being the most loathed celeprosy lesion in the history of the species seems like a happening idea at first - forty-five days at Century Regional Detention Center is so the new thirty days at Promises Malibu! But it se...
