We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading t...
You know, some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it's your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You're probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you're gonna have to live with t...
I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you ...
In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal...
The first cause of waste is probably even buried in our DNA. Human beings have a need for maintaining consistency of the apperceptive mass. What does that mean? What it means is, for every perception we have, it needs to tally with the one like it be...
I grew up in a rural area. I grew up in deep southern middle Tennessee, probably about thirty miles from the Alabama border. There's nothing there, really. And the TV was my link to the outside world. It's what kept me from going into factory employm...
I found maths very easy, but I still enjoyed discovering things. You have to have the necessary information. For example, what's the difference between the mean and the median? Probability fascinated me. You have to think very carefully about things,...
There are still times when I am walking up, and I look at the Capitol, and I think, 'Oh my goodness.' Right now, I am kind of scared to go onto the floor and speak. Once I get used to it, though, they probably won't be able to keep me off there.
I was painfully shy, so my aunt suggested to my mum that me and my brother go to Stage 84, a performing arts school in Yorkshire. I've probably romanticised it in my head, but I seem to remember that in the space of an hour's drama workshop, I was tr...
I did a lot of theater in college, and I knew that not many people make it, but I just figured, 'Well, I really want to try acting while I'm young, and I don't ever want to look back and say that I never gave it a try.' I fully figured I'd be back in...
I remember being in high school, and you had to draw those lines and define yourself. I don't think when I was in high school I would have been willing to admit that I liked the Shins. I was into TSOL and Black Flag. I probably would have listened to...
I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it's probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we'll eat, what we'll do, what we'll think about, what we'll say... and on and on.
I think I was a shy kid. I grew up without television. I had a dog, and we lived up in the White Mountains in the summer, and I had no friends up there. And I would just go play hide-and-seek with my dog and probably had some imaginary friends.
President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and th...
I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, w...
When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like...
My daughter just graduated college and she's a dance major. She's done a couple of dance videos already and won Miss Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago. She's going out for Miss United States the second week of July, out in Las Vegas. She will proba...
If you set goals for yourself, and you're like a lot of other people, you probably realize it's not that your goals are physically impossible that's keeping you from achieving them; it's that you lack the self-discipline to stick to them. It's physic...
I think some of the things I deal with Hopper probably has dealt with also, since it's somewhat the same environment and I have pretty strong reactions to what this country looks like. It looks pretty dull and spare, and you like this and dislike it ...
I do feel like I'm in this lucky position where I can write something and people will read it, and I feel like I should say something that's probably worth saying... I feel like it's something worth saying, and one more person saying it is better.
The scripture is filled with examples of genuine masculinity; you could mine David's story for probably a year by itself. And we have to get the masculinity of Jesus back. Not the pale-faced altar boy, but the man that made a weapon and cleared the t...
