I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.
I think technology is us, not something we invented. I think we are more psychic now because we have cell phones and you can look and see who's calling you. When people start seeing technology as us, as humanity, our whole idea of what existence is, ...
Now it's easy for someone to set up a storefront and reach the entire world in very modest ways. So these technologies that we thought would dis-intermediate traditional sellers gave more people the tools to be sellers. It also changed the balance of...
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people an...
I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends t...
Everyone has a crazy old lady in their family like 'Mama.' No one ever comes up to me and says 'Mama' is just like them, so no one is ever offended by her. Even young people like to laugh at her. I think she helps kids appreciate their own grandmothe...
Along the way, let's never forget that once we were children and that we were all playing together without distinction of skin color, society level, or where people come from. Adults need to remember to play and to be more childlike in our behavior. ...
If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience, that's fine, if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just...
Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.
Ice cream is the perfect buffer, because you can do things in a somewhat lighthearted way. Plus, people have an emotional response to ice cream; it's more than just food. So I think when you combine caring, and eating wonderful food, it's a very powe...
Consumers deserve the right to know what's in their food - and obviously, most people want that choice. It's hard to see how more knowledge about the products we eat every day can hurt us.
We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. 'America, land of liberty and freedom?' You know, that's baloney. More than 2 million Americans are behind bars now. Communist China has four times the population and they have 1.5 m...
I've always had a bazillion songs in my archive, but I want to play people stuff they know. Now that I have two albums' worth of material, that gives me freedom to compose a set that's more well-balanced and build a show rather than just a recital of...
I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom, but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.
While we welcome people of all faiths in America we cannot be so naive as to expect all countries to do the same. But we cannot allow their cultural mores to snuff out our religious freedoms or the freedom of women to have equal rights.
When you're singing, you're using extra muscles, and it requires a lot of exercise and breathing. You can't do that if you're a sissy. If I have any fitness advice for people, I'd tell them to sing more. It's good therapy, too.
By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools an...
Why would we want to keep a tax cut that's failed? Why would we not want to go back to the Clinton tax code? And why would we not want to help every family more with a health-care plan like mine? Let's help average people. Let's be Democrats.
Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yours...
We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.
In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely u...
