Americans, they have an incredible operatic tradition: the Metropolitan Opera House is - if not the most prestigious - one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world for over 100 years.
For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn't rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of the country when the Americans moved in March and April of 2003.
I don't know where my songs come from... If I knew, I'd know too much, more than we are allowed on this plane.
I came up the old-fashioned way - tea boy, cutter, focus-puller, cinematographer - but I wasn't myself old-fashioned.
For my prom, I wore a white suit with a burgundy shirt, tie and cummerbund, along with white shoes, a white trilby and a cane. I was extra fly that day.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.
Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.
I am the type that cannot stay put in living in the past and solely in the past. It's not healthy and it doesn't feel right.
I'm a bad pessimist. I don't think about how successful any record I've ever done is going to do before it came out.
Like, if you are a celebrity, then anyone will let you be in a film or on a TV show, and if you're an actor, chances are if you are successful, you are becoming a celebrity.
You know, as an only child, you're kind of in a bubble, and there are all sorts of things about my childhood that I still can't really place.
Nigeria is a West African nation of over 100 million energetic people. It is endowed with lots of natural resources but lacks human resources.
As a singer, I have won the highest honours in China. Actually I am like the panda: we are both national treasures.
I wanted to think about our creation myth; you know, what is the fundamental story that defines America. And it certainly is the West.
Where'd the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn't stress at all just a run and a jump into a harmless fall
When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that.
I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.
I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax.
But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.
Give me a strapless gown and a rhinestone-studded guitar and some 55-year-olds in my audience, along with their kids and grandkids. Don't give me 'boogie'!
