The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians.
Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.
I don't care if religious people consider me amoral because I lack their beliefs in God. I do however care deeply about efforts to turn religious beliefs into law and those efforts benefit greatly from the conviction that individually and collectively we cannot be good without God.
The phenomenal success of the recovery movement reflects two simple truths that emerge in adolescence: all people love to talk about themselves, and most people are mad at their parents. You don't have to be in denial to doubt that truths like these will set us free.
Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.
I do what I do because I have a compulsion to hold forth. I don't spend a lot of time, if any, thinking about the effect my work is going to have on the world. And I have an abiding mistrust of people who think that they're going to change the world. I think that people who think that they're going to change the world are the kind of people who put bombs on airplanes.
What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.
I'm really, really dumb about describing wine, but I like wine that's full-bodied and dry.
Have Faith! Have faith in the Eternal Goodness. Believe that the core of the Universe is sound and sweet.
I remember coming in to the studio and meeting Barry Manilow. I was kind of star-struck. He said, "I want to play you this song. " We get to the end of the song and I hear him actually sing my name as part of the lyric. I had to pick my jaw up from the floor!
o matter how much research you do, or invention you do, whether it's a character from a novel, a completely invented character or someone who actually existed, it's a work of faction. By the very fact you only have an hour and a half or two hours to tell a story, you're telescoping events and it is, in the end, a work of imagination.