Over the years, people have often said to us that they were going through some horrible thing in their life - maybe the worst thing that had ever happened, or that they could think would ever happen - and that, somehow, in that state, we made them la...
The liberal feminist movement never imagined that women would take seriously the encouragement to become our own heroes and claim life for ourselves, on our terms, no matter who we are. Pro-choice and pro-life, Christian and not, poor and rich, black...
I'll only work on TV shows that have a 'Sookie' on them! Those are the only shows that will cast me. And I've never even met a Sookie in my life. Sookie on 'Gilmore Girls' was played by Melissa McCarthy. And Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, is number o...
A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They ask...
I don't think the job of the antiracist is to convert the far-out heathen racist, or give them their 'come to Jesus' moment, as it's called. They'll either have those or they won't, and usually, when they have them, it's not because of something some...
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enfo...
I love San Francisco so much. I call it the Emerald City and have been coming here since 1992. I have a few old friends that live here, and my aunt and uncle live in Oakland. I think it's a magical city - it's big, sexy and very 'cosmo' with a small-...
I'm a really big advocate of ethical fashion. I actually have a travelling boutique called Maison de Mode, which is all about ethical fashion. I also like Maiyet from Paris. They're very Celine-esque in their silhouettes. I love their back story, too...
I think that I was lucky that I was 30 when I did 'Love Story', which came with this extravagant pop celebrity. I had already done 15 years of what I call 'real' work.' I was a waitress, chambermaid, and a photographer's assistant, so I knew that I w...
Hard times only call for you to get tougher and push harder, but definitely not to get discouraged and give up on yourself. Life is about growing, and without going through some challenges, struggles and obstacles, you would never know how strong you...
What most of us usually call being educated, is earning a high institution certification for a career. But the truth is, life is more than just learning about your field of work. In order to achieve a meaningful life, you must seek to become more fam...
If you still haven't given up, why not travel all the way through and receive your reward? But if you have already given up, today calls for you to courageously stand up with faith and get back in the game. The territory of victory is waiting on you.
I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit th...
Such is life, marked by the ticking of the clock and the call of the alarm until the day it all falls into perpetual silence. For most of us, certainly for this boy, life is not composed of great deeds, but of small actions, and that’s okay. It’s...
Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries ...
A lot of times when I ran, to be honest, I didn't know where I was in the race. So I always was looking up at the scoreboard to say, 'Just call my name to see where I am,' because I tried to have such tunnel vision not to distract myself.
For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.
My first book, 'In Praise of Slowness,' examines how the world got stuck in fast-forward and chronicles a global trend towards putting on the brakes. That trend is called the Slow movement. 'Slow' in this context does not mean doing everything at a s...
A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by thei...
Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefi...
A popular management term used to describe efficiency is called "working smart." We are told that if we work smart instead of hard, we will be more productive. But if we do work "smart" then we are likely to have idle time, and if we are idle we will...