Even if you overcome a tremendous challenge and feel the personal victory, it's simply not powerful enough. It may activate your left brain, which says, 'I have achieved,' but it will not activate your more social right brain, which desperately desir...
All the way back in 1999, when I first stumbled upon the idea of a project tracking John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and all the major Depression-era bank robbers, I thought the subject was too big to be a single book. Instead, with a friend's hel...
You have a clean slate every day you wake up. You have a chance every single morning to make that change and be the person you want to be. You just have to decide to do it. Decide today’s the day. Say it: this is going to be my day.
But you really - I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal. You know he comes out of stand-up. He comes - it's all abo...
On land, you can walk away from people, from unpleasant situations. But when you're on a ship for 14 months with 49 other people, if you don't resolve your issues it literally could mean - and this would be an extreme circumstance - the sinking of th...
I think I was probably looking for gay role models when I was younger, before I even knew or thought I was gay. I didn't really make the connection that they were gay, but I felt drawn to them because they were going against the grain, and I knew the...
When the 2008 victory of Barack Obama and the defeat of grumpy old John McCain began looking, um, inevitable, I started fielding inquiries about whether 'Nixonland' - the name of the book I published that spring about the origins of the generation of...
Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what c...
The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation, we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and ...
I have forty-six cookbooks. I have sixty-eight takeout menus from four restaurants. I have one hundred and sixteen soy sauce packets. I have three hundred and eighty-two dishes, bowls, cups, saucers, mugs and glasses. I eat over the sink. I have five...
I grew up partially in L.A. and partially in New York. In L.A., anything goes because it's really temperate. There aren't any fashion rules dictated by weather, whereas in New York, of course, there are. New York is seasonal, and also it's a fashion ...
I don't mean to offend anybody, but I think that we get a lot of scientists now who are bent into a system, and we lose some of their boldness by that. Obviously, you have to learn the ropes, but I think it's important to do that without hammering ou...
Just as the England football manager starts with bells and flags and balloons and ends up reviled, so do prime ministers. Tony Blair - is there anyone more despised now? Gordon Brown - all right, nobody voted for him but, you know... just think of an...
By 1988, I'm seeing this commercial phenomenon beginning to show up. Hardware makers are selling routers to universities so they can build up their campus networks. So I remember thinking, 'Well, how are we going to get this in the hands of the gener...
I was very lucky to be offered a lovely piece of property to build a career on. I started building a house on it, but it wasn't necessarily a house I would want to live in. So I ripped down that house, and I worked with these great lumberjacks to bui...
Like its Senate counterpart, H.R. 1908 is the product of years of bipartisan collaboration. And now, by passing S. 1145, the U.S. Senate has a similar opportunity to restore our patent regime to its rightful position of protecting inventors' property...
Well, I definitely have an artistic side to me as well. I write, I act, I draw. With that artistic mind I have, a lot of doors have opened for me. I can try to pursue, like - if it's something using my writing skills, maybe a book. Or maybe if it's m...
I'm a Conservative, but I talk for the ordinary working classes. I get on with the boys at the pub, but I can also mix with Prince Andrew. I understand both levels. The toffs haven't lived in council estates; they've just known big mansions. How can ...
I was lucky I always got along with girls. It was never like a big deal. I had a lot of girls that I was friends with that I wasn't sexual with. I think having two older sisters made me comfortable like that. I just like people, so I can just go up a...
When I go from a role with heavy prosthetic makeup, which I've done quite a bit of as well, and then do a role where I'm not wearing any, I have to be conscious of toning everything down. Because when you're wearing prosthetic makeup, of course, you ...
Sometimes I say I feel more like a dancer than an actor, because there are things implied about being an actor that I don't really like. I feel more comfortable with the word 'performer'. I like being the thing. I like being the doer. There's a factu...