All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves.

I was standing on the deck of the USS Blue, a destroyer. We were all alone out there at this buoy, tied up.

I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.

Everything was black in the harbor, but there were still some fires burning on the ships.

We were very fortunate that the carriers weren't in the harbor.

Destroyers did not have chaplains because they were too small.

All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves.

I'd get a shell, they weighed about 80 pounds I think, but when I was 19 or 20 that was nothing. I'd take a shell and a bag of powder, I'd put it in the hoist and then I would send it up to the gun.

After the atomic bombs were dropped, the war ended and we went into Tokyo Bay with the rest of the fleet, the Missouri and the rest of them, while they signed the terms of surrender that ended the war.

They got word that the Japanese planes were coming back, so we sunk her ourselves so the Japanese wouldn't get it. We didn't want the Japanese to get it intact.

Our duty was to try and find the Japanese fleet. We never did find the Japanese fleet and I am awfully glad, because they had attacked us there with six carriers, three battleships, 10 or 15 cruisers, and about 20 destroyers.

I had been out there long enough. I had not seen my family for four years.

We managed to get underway, and I don't know to this day why we didn't get struck or take a torpedo, but we didn't. We got outside of the exit of the harbor and we started dropping depth charges.

It was lucky for me. It wasn't lucky for the nine people that got killed and the 20 that were injured.

We got orders to strike the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. We had a task force with the Enterprise. We had two or three cruisers and probably eight or 10 destroyers.

The gunner's mate came up and started breaking the locks on the ammunition. Everything was locked up for fear that someone might go in there with a cigarette or something.

There's nothing so rewarding as to make people realize they are worthwhile in this world.

I taught myself confidence. When I'd walk into a room and feel scared to death, I'd tell myself, 'I'm not afraid of anybody.' And people believed me. You've got to teach yourself to take over the world.

The most successful entrepreneurs tell you they have a great team. Lots of small-business owners let ego get in the way. Many people helped me along the way. You've got to remember the people who were loyal to you, and don't forget them when you become successful.

Music is my life. It is sacred.

I could never accept findings based almost exclusively on mathematics. It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

In a play, a man comes out and says something. Another man comes out and says something. And by the end of the night, we've learned something we didn't know, In a musical, there is singing and dancing for two hours, but you've got to know everything in 5 minutes. Do it in those 5 minutes or you'll lose them.

There are times when I'm watching an NFL quarterback struggling to get through the game, and I get bitter to some extent.

When you have a song on the radio your career and your life changes maybe for the better and maybe for the not so good... depending on how it's going that day.

Not to decide is to decide.

Trapped in the bureaucracy nightmare, real families suffer when the big banks and their servicers force foreclosures. The emotional toll on children packing up their rooms and on parents struggling to find a temporary roof is a deep one.

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

If a horse won't eat it, I don't want to play on it.

The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.

There is a bit of a movement as far as younger people in country music. That is cool because people are saying things like, 'I didn't listen to country music until so-and-so came along.' And I'm like, 'Yeah! Now you know why I love it.'

When I planned to ski Everest, the first thing I faced was, 'How can I return alive?' All the preparation and training was based on this question. But the more I prepared, I knew the chance of survival was very slim. Nobody in the world had done this before, so I told myself that I must face death. Otherwise, I am not eligible.

I covered hockey for a few years in the late '90s and early 2000s for the 'Colorado Springs Gazette,' and I covered the Avalanche for some of the glory years. I've done hockey off and on as a sportswriter but never played it.

All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.

One is not necessarily made self centered because he is foolish but one is very often made foolish because he is self centered.

I wasn't strong enough to have an eating disorder. I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that's not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, 'Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately.'

Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create.

When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.

If anything happened, I think my husband would have to deal with that as the time came.

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.

I watched Janis one time - we opened for her - and that's the only time I ever saw her. We opened for Jimi Hendrix. I got to stand on the side of the stage and watch him for two hours and then he died. But I got the essence before they left.