Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I thi...
When I sing, I have a sense of peace, I feel like my brain turns off, and I become the core person of who I am - the essence of me. I feel connected to whatever is out there. It's almost like I leave my body and get to watch.
The implications of likability are long-lasting and serious. Women adjust their behavior to be likable and as a result have less power in the world. And this desire to be liked and accepted goes beyond the boardroom - it's an issue that comes up for ...
I've spent quality time in the aerospace community, with my service on two presidential commissions, but at heart, I'm an academic. Being an academic means I don't wield power over person, place or thing. I don't command armies; I don't lead labor un...
It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collectio...
My husband and I have known each other since kindergarten. I had a crush on him in school, but we never dated. Then we saw each other again after high school, and there was something instantly familiar about him. I'm a very shy person and was very cl...
I just think the most important aspect in being able to have a productive relationship between the teachers' unions and the districts and the states that they're dealing with is that the person sitting across the table from them should not have recei...
I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people's religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought ...
Every state has an undoubted right to determine the status, or domestic and social condition, of the persons domiciled within its territory except insofar as the powers of the states in this respect are restrained, or duties and obligations imposed u...
I don't speak out because I am an actor nor will I keep silent because I am an actor. I respect my profession, but it endows me with no special privileges; but it also does not limit me or muzzle me. I am a person and a citizen with the attendant res...
The sad thing is that I feel so boring because 'Twilight' is literally how every conversation I have these days begins - whether it's someone I'm meeting for the first time or someone I just haven't seen in a while. The first thing I want to say to t...
I once called a guy into his own office and spun around in his own chair to greet him. That kind of thing may be why I quit, before I got into serious trouble. I would smile and the person would get so upset. But you do a thousand of those things, an...
There are those who believe that the value of a children's book can be measured only in terms of the moral lessons it tries to impose or the perfect role models it offers. Personally, I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it give...
When checking in at an airport, no matter how rude the check-in person is to you, always smile and be nice because you don't know what kind of day they've had. You are going on holiday and they're stuck wherever they are. Be nice to them because they...
I had a friend at college who took being poor very personally. He started showering in the sports centre next door and said he wasn't going to pay for the hot water in our flat any more because he didn't use it. He made me and my other friend pay the...
With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that stren...
Success has nothing to do with box office as far as I'm concerned. Success has to do with achieving your goals, your internal goals, and growing as a person. It would have been nice to have been connected with a couple more box office hits, but in th...
It is not a very difficult task to make what is commonly called an amusing book of travels. Any one who will tell, with a reasonable degree of graphic effect, what he has seen, will not fail to carry the reader with him; for the interest we all feel ...
I get invited to many more literary festivals than I used to because I'm associated with 'Slumdog Millionaire,' the brand. Many more doors have opened up for me as a result of the global success of the film, although I believe that I'm the same perso...
When people treat you mean, you dislike them for that, but not because of their person, who they are. I was born and raised in a segregated society, but when I left there, I had nobody I disliked other than the people that'd mistreated me, and that o...
Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil...
