I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave fo...
Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt th...
I started off as a model and struggled for some time until I got a break as an actress. I was too stubborn to let go and was sure I was in the right place at the right time. I just fought and I think that's how I am where I am today.
When I go on vacation, I take very few clothes and a whole lot of books. It's the most soothing thing in the world. Reading 'Moby-Dick' is like being in a time machine. I almost feel as excited as the first time I read it and I always find something ...
People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.
Laura Bush has the face of my mother when my mother was young. The face, the body, the voice. The first time I saw on TV Laura Bush, I got frozen because it was as if my mother was not dead. 'Oh, Mama,' I said, 'Mama.'
We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing, or provocative films, I'm worried, not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are kill...
As you may possibly have noticed from time to time, I have tended to make a habit of sticking my head above the parapet and generally getting it shot off for pointing out what has always been blindingly obvious to me.
In barely one generation, we've moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them - often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to...
I actually met Deadmau5 for the first time on the red carpet in Hollywood for the Grammys. I was there with my daughter, and he introduced himself to me. He said, 'Hey, I'm from Toronto.' I had a little conversation with him, and then I realized I'm ...
I hear an album so many times during the course of making it that when I've just finished it, I don't want to hear it again. After you've taken a little bit of time away from it, you can come back to it, which can be scary. I'm happy with 'Sonik Kick...
I don't want to sing songs that aren't worth while. Time is so rare. I just don't want to waste the listener's time and I think that my songs don't do that. That's what I pray for. I want songs that really touch people's hearts.
There is this strange fog of being a young man that I would refer to as soft time. Time does not go forward there. It's a series of doors that kind of wind back into one another, like a series of doors in the upper floor of a house. You revisit the s...
My father taught me, in boxing, that when you - particularly when you get hit in the face for the first time - you're going to panic. That instead of panicking, just accept it. Stay calm. And any time anybody hits you, they always leave themselves op...
Well, I've learned a lot from Bill Belichick. I've said time and time again, before I got to New England, I thought I knew a lot about football. But I think he taught me a lot from A to Z. I still carry it to this day.
A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent ...
I'll never forget the first time... I got a Blackberry smartphone, and I'm playing with it and I'm going, 'This is really important because my email, my contacts, my calendar. Everything is here and it's synced up with that computer. It's synced up w...
A lot of times, I would play a lot of roles a man would play. In 'One Million Years B.C.' - yes, the costume was revealing. But I was outdoors all the time. I was fighting to survive; there was a girl fight. I was participating; it was physical, and ...
Do I think I can take 20 carries now? Well, I think finally last week and this is week was probably the first time I could probably say, yeah, I could take 20 carries and go do some damage.
I never had worked in high fashion before, had never experienced it when I was a model before. I appreciate it, being able to work with such talented people; it feels like a gift now. I think for everyone everything happens at the right time, and thi...
I think the shyness one feels in childhood is often overcome with time. There are children who hide behind their parents' legs, but you don't see grown-ups hiding behind people. It just doesn't happen. I mean, not that often. People develop social sk...