I have been unusually blessed in that I've been allowed to pursue two strands of a career that both delight me and seem to please the public.
I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.
That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration. In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world.
One of the things you learn being in the public eye is that you have the ability to raise awareness about serious issues, and, in the process, really help people.
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
I'm a musician at heart, I know I'm not really a singer. I couldn't compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.
The public is strongly in favor of the Kyoto Protocols, so strongly in favor that a majority of Bush voters thought that he was in favor of it. They are simply unaware.
The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.
When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.
Harnessing new communications technology offers one promising way to make public participation easier and more effective.
I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail.
A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
Almost all first ladies have had tremendous power on personnel issues, whether the public realized it or not, whether it was Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan or whoever.
If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.
I know that every time I step on the stage it's a real gift ,so I try not to take it for granted, and I try to make it an experience that the public can really participate in.
My decision to look seriously at elected office is grounded in a deep commitment to public service and my experience - both my own and that of my family - in finding just, practical, and bipartisan solutions to difficult challenges.
My first novel, 'Housekeeping,' was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it. In general, my experience with publication has been gentle and gratifying.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Some people will go to the opening of an envelope. They live their lives in the public eye and get off on it, they need it. They need that kind of adoration. If their name isn't in the tabloids once a week they feel like a failure.
