Celebrity poverty, that's the hidden scandal in Blair's Britain. You can't help but worry for them. A girl I knew developed X-ray eyes for celebrity sorrows. She taught me to read the subtext of the down-market celebrity interview, she knew all the H...
A little arrogance (or even a lot) isn't such a bad thing, although your mother undoubtedly told you different. Mine did. "Pride goeth before a fall, Stephen", she said... and then I found out - right around the age that is 19 x 2 - that eventually y...
Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question...
Doubt is a storm. We either ride it out, or we change our course. Neither is right or wrong--to stay or go. Twenty years ago, should you have really married X, or Y? This college, or that? A life-changing decision one makes becomes the right decision...
I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in fro...
I'm not from a political family and didn't grow up dreaming of being George Washington. I started working in 8th grade and have held every odd job possible - working in a gravel pit, weighing big wheelers, ticket sales, data base management - but I k...
Freedom is a timeless value. The United Nations Charter calls for encouraging respect for fundamental freedoms. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions freedom more than twenty times. All countries have committed to protecting individual f...
What people really want to know from their doctor is, are you going to make me feel better? And what they really want to know from a president are, are you going to give me some security when it comes to my work? Because if I'm not working, my family...
What was unique about me being in City Hall during the Giuliani Administration, I was the only one who wasn't an attorney. I may have been the only one who didn't work in a prosecutor's office. So I took a completely different point of view on how th...
After I got my law degree and business degree, I went to work for my family, and I spent two years at Hyatt doing a training program. I was really interested in real estate - one reason was that nobody in my family was doing that. I was looking for a...
I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think he cares for his country - don't get me wrong about that - but I think he truly misunderstands what this country was based upon, the values that America was based upon, which was free enterprise and having...
I get heartfelt thanks from all kinds of people. Today I heard from a waitress in Georgia who has lost her job and is trying to figure out how her local bank can change the terms on her credit card, and I heard from a physicist at a major research un...
More than five million seniors have already saved money on their prescription drugs, and almost 33 million have benefited from free preventive services. The president cracked down hard on Medicare and health care fraud, recovering a record-breaking $...
When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a par...
I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 m...
If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about na...
Scientists habitually moan that the public doesn't understand them. But they complain too much: public ignorance isn't peculiar to science. It's sad if some citizens can't tell a proton from a protein. But it's equally sad if they're ignorant of thei...
Having played many roles of scientific intellect I do have an empathy for that world. It's been hard on me because flying the Enterprise for seven years in Star Trek and sitting in Cerebro in X-men has led people to believe that I know what I'm talki...
I've done a contract with my district. I have term-limited myself. I am not taking the pension. I am not taking pay raises, and my family and I are bringing our own health care to Washington, D.C. And my dad taught me as a kid to lead by example - Co...
I think its rather peculiar. It's not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision. But I'd guess you'd have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform. There sure is a lot of mention of gover...
My father was an immigrant who literally walked across Europe to get out of Russia. He fought in World War I. He was wounded in action. My father was a great success even though he never had money. He was a very determined man, a great role model.
