Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for President in my lifetime. I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family poli...
I appreciate what others have done in the past especially for my genre, and my style of singing. And they sure put a footprint - you know, they got the foot in the door, but I'm going to put my foot straight through the door.
The decision to retire was quite an easy one for me because by that stage my knees were so badly gone. If I had been like Martina Navratilova and my body had let me I would have carried on playing a lot longer.
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all rode their wartime heroics into the White House.
If I should go before the rest of you Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone, Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice But be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, Parting is hell, But life goes on, So sing as well.
The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and ma...
The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Inde...
Because I never thought the Lord would treat me any different from any other honest man or that I had an official position that compelled the Lord to help me in any other way than He would help any other man.
Of this they drank half a pint every day, and sometimes more or less, as it operated, by way of gentle physic. Two others had each two oranges and one lemon given them every day. These they ate with greediness, at different times, upon an empty stoma...
I was Paul Schrader's assistant for six months before I went to film school, and he's very much about knowing what's going to happen on every page before you even start writing dialogue - the entire plot and character arcs are mapped out.
They call me 'sweet,' and 'gentle'; and some of the men go the length of calling me 'endearing,' and I laugh in my sleeve and think, 'Oh, Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!'
The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the A...
I'm just trying to touch the world and touch the people and just get good material. And show them that we can get it done. Just because you're African American, you still can touch the masses. And that's my goal. I won't stop until that goal is conti...
If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out mysteries in a sort of poetic realm, and hoping that if a story is honest, if you're dragging the deep truth out of yourself, then something...
I trained with the FBI in Portland and I also had many conversations with female FBI agents in Los Angeles, as well. That was again something that also came in very handy for Basic, because I'd learned already how to handle a gun and how to behave ju...
If you make the decision to send your kid to public school don't even look at private schools. Just shut the door. Just turn off the TV. And then you don't even have to worry about preschool. You have to worry about what's good for your kid, but you ...
'True Blood' is shot on film. It's more like a movie, and they take more days to shoot it, plus it has an hour of content. 'The Good Wife' is network. They're shooting on HD. It moves quicker and they only have forty minutes of content instead of a f...
The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you...
In Ronald Reagan's chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally as the hero of your own adventure story is a char...
I'm probably going to go more the feature film route for a while, just so I have more time on my hands. If I did go back to television, I'd do a comedy, a half hour. Or I'd go back on an hour long if it was ensemble, if I had a smaller role, if I cou...
