This is due partly to the fact that Americans are much better fed than Europeans, and partly to the undeveloped resources of a new country, but more largely to our climate, which acts as a constant stimulus.
It is not about how much money we make or how big and powerful our work appears to others, it is about the love with which we put into each act of kindness toward another human being.
I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.
Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem.
We often forget that calling for peace is the most courageous act we can take. It’s easy to call for revenge, to claim injustice, and to launch an attack. It’s much more difficult to forgive, to call for peace, to lay down weapons.
Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.
For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.
I went to college for one semester, and I took every subject I could, and I ended up failing. So I thought to myself, Ever since I was a kid, I've loved expression - and that's when I started thinking about acting.
The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual that ultimately makes the difference—by offerin...
To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful… everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open po...
The body, I had been taught, wants only to live. Suicide, I had understood, is an act not of the body against itself but of the will against the body. Yet here I beheld a body that was going to die rather than change its nature.
I went there and helped him shuffle pictures of people, and one of the agents asked me if I was interested in acting. Of course, I was a little bit interested in it; I'm sure that's part of the reason I moved to L.A. even though I never admitted it t...
I needed an outlet in high school and came across painting. I've actually been painting longer than I've been acting. A movie is a collaborative effort, and with painting you just have yourself.
I guess what I enjoy most is directing, because it incorporates all aspects of filmmaking. Directing is in the same line as acting - both are popularity contests, and in both you're trying to tell a story through the film as a medium.
School allowed me to have outlets so that some of the pressure was taken off the acting. Every role in every movie, I used to live or die by. Once I had these new outlets, I relaxed a lot more.
I teach a Bible study for homeless guys in downtown Atlanta every week. Been doing it for years. That's the guys I'd rather go talk to. I'd rather take my act outside the church.
I don't have a burning desire to act, strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.
I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing.
All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging sa...
The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States-even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency when they did it.
Since its enactment in the weeks following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the tools in the Patriot Act have been used by law enforcement to stop more than 400 terrorist threats to our families and communities.