If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.
I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.
If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.
I think in the context of senior government positions, I think an anecdote of what I told President-Elect Barack Obama when we had our first meeting. And I said, "You don't know me. Can you trust me? Why do you think you can trust me?" and so on. But at the end, I said, "You can count on me to be loyal to you. I will not leak. I will keep my disagreements with you private. And if I cannot be loyal, I'll leave. " Loyalty means doing what you think is in the best interest of that person as well as the country.
Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.
I fired a lot of senior people myself and I think the key, when you feel compelled to remove a senior official, is essentially to have all your ducks in a row at the beginning. Have everybody understand what the rationale was.
What I know concerns me. What I don't know concerns me even more. What people aren't telling me worries me the most.
For me, my favourite actresses are like Charlotte Rampling or Gena Rowlands. . . people who have always stepped outside of the restraints of a certain type of woman or story. I always like those movies the best.
I want to be able to look back and think that as long as I was going this, I did the best that I could.
My view of social media is that it is a set of tools, not a religion.
I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.