'Rust' really started with the passing of my dad, and me really looking back inward to my self about where I stand with all things on a faith/religious/spiritual level. And it's really put me on this interesting road and very educational, I might add...
If I just do everything the opposite of what my dad did, I think that will make things pretty easy. I can joke about it now because I'm past that stage where it used to hurt. By having a kid, it's gone. I could take all that negative energy that I ha...
I used to say, 'Man, I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm funny; I'll go on trips with them - I'll do all sorts of stuff.' But the momming? I'm not made for that. I have a really good mom; I know what she put into it.
My dad in particular I tend to use - I call him 'The Brain.' If he's accessible, I'd rather put it through his brain. My wife, Melissa, maintains that the closer he is in proximity to me, the less I think for myself. And I think she's actually correc...
My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to...
I come from the state of Michigan. We were the first English-speaking government in the world to outlaw the death penalty, back in the 1840s. We have never had, as a state, the death penalty in Michigan. I was raised with that, and even Republicans i...
To me, Ann Romney sounds like a better candidate than her husband. She put her MS into remission through horseback riding, alternative therapies, and a healthy diet. She knows how to pace herself. She has a sense of humor and an innate honesty, and h...
I have no problem with the idea of comfort, but it is not an important thing aesthetically. If you look at a shoe and immediately say it looks very comfortable, in terms of design, it is not going to excite me. Of course, I am not putting nails in my...
When I started this project, I was a young architect. I was very apprehensive about any changes to the design. Whether I wanted to or not, I learned that you can accept some changes to its form without compromising its intent. But it's a leap of fait...
Whether it's an $11 flip-flop or a $2 key ring or a $2,000 dress, they're all done with integrity. They're all done with a design sense. As long as the creativity exists, then I don't think it's a sellout. A sellout is putting your name on any piece ...
A simple compliment goes a really long way - for a guy to just come over and say, 'You have great hair' or 'I really like your dress,' and then just smile and walk away. That's a great move, because he's sort of putting himself out there by doing tha...
We often think about happiness as trying to increase our joy, but it's also about decreasing our worry. So what you get for paying those high taxes is, if you're a parent thinking about putting your child through school, you don't have to worry about...
Here in Indiana and in many states throughout the union, we rely on coal to power our homes and provide good-paying middle class jobs - like the one my family relied on when I was a kid. The coal mine helped put food on our table and helped me pursue...
What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments...
God created the world; the laws of nature were created by God. True science tries to find out what God put in the world. The trouble is where scientists speculate about theology and they don't know what they're talking about because they weren't ther...
I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and portray the country as being very special. They've made a great success of their country, and the people are fed up with the constant reporting of only t...
I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this ...
One of the great things about being a writer/journalist is that my boss loves me to go out and do features on being someone else. I did a feature on Kate Middleton, where I went to an incredible fancy state home in the countryside, put on a wedding d...
When the Industrial Revolution started, the amount of carbon sitting underneath Britain in the form of coal was as big as the amount of carbon sitting under Saudi Arabia in the form of oil, and this carbon powered the Industrial Revolution, it put th...
I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they ...
There are so many great actors, but I really have a lot of respect for Johnny Depp. I've seen a lot of movies with him in it and, even if it's a film that wasn't as successful as you thought it would be, I've never seen him put in a bad performance. ...
