The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling.
The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Inde...
Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first A...
I draft on the computer. I have a really giant screen that attaches to my laptop, and then I have a humongous digital drawing tablet called a Cintiq. It sits at all different angles, and it's so big that it would take two people to move it.
The first piece I ever collected was a Roy Lichtenstein: a sculpture called 'Surrealist Head II'. There was a waiting list. I remember Steve Martin wanted one, and I wanted one. I got the 'Surrealist Head', and I was thrilled.
In the budget, the president will call for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security. This will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and bring this category of spending to the lowest sh...
Baloo: What do they call you? Bagheera: His name is Mowgli, and I'm taking him back to the man village. Baloo: Man village? They'll ruin him. They'll make a man out of him.
Well, I think the American people have to understand that the Mexican government is committed, in a very substantial way, to eradicating the effect of the impact of the cartels on Mexico. We have - what are called vetted units down there. Units that ...
What we are witnessing is the birth of something I call 'Polisdigitocracy.' This is a form of government that counts participation and transparency as its cornerstones and uses technology as its guide. The digital revolution is allowing democracy to ...
I just finished a novel called 'Exult,' by Joe Quirk, last night. It's about hang gliding. I liked his first book, too, 'The Ultimate Rush.' I now know that I never, ever, ever want to go hang gliding, so that's good.
Robert Ledgard: What's going on? Vera Cruz: I'm going to kill you. Robert Ledgard: This is a joke, right? Vera Cruz: Call it what you want. Robert Ledgard: But you promised! Vera Cruz: I lied.
[from trailer] Liesel Meminger: My name is Liesel Meminger. I don't have a family. Or even a place to call home. I never understood the meaning of the word Hope. But I'm about to meet the people who will change all that.
What the immune system of man has in its advanced development is what we call immunological memory, so that once it sees something for the first time, when it sees it the second or the third time, it can respond against it in a way that's much more a...
I was Lady Gaga way before her time. I had a wee kettle for a handbag. Didn't everyone, at some point? One of the teachers used to call me Dame Flora Robson because I had this big, long Victorian skirt. And I wore a Peruvian hat. It was the 1980s - p...
A lot of weird things happen to me. People call out to me on the street and I figure I know them, and I walk over. And then they start to talk about a movie, and I get so embarrassed. Sometimes they think I'm Lorraine Bracco or Laura San Giacomo or M...
I'd been a housewife and mother to our son Thomas Jefferson, and I was looking for a new career. So when my agent called and said a producer named Paul Elliott from E&B productions, the biggest panto company in the country at the time, wanted to meet...
Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' ...
When I started in professional baseball, I had what you might call a rude awakening. See this scar right next to my left ear? That's where the pitcher hit me the very first time I came to bat as a pro. I was out cold for about 10 minutes.
We did some soul-searching. Was the cable industry obsolete? Was it an opportune time to get out? Our conclusion was that if you rebuilt your system with this new fiber-optic coaxial hybrid - which we now call broadband - the glass was half full, not...
I can think of the number of people who were like, 'I will never get a cellphone because I don't want people calling me all the time. And I will never get on Facebook because I don't want to share that stuff with people. And Twitter, that's not for m...
Retiring was hard. I'd spent 15 years doing something I loved, but when you get older everything seems to go. When I started spending too long with the physio and the doctor, I knew it was time to call it a day. But I had no preparation for being ret...
