I write in the studio.

I'd like to be Queen Elizabeth.

Becoming famous and selling a lot of records doesn't change a thing.

I have a bronze statue of myself, naked. I have these really big curls and water comes out of every curl. It's hot.

I've never met anyone that is their image.

Whatever your image is, it's probably not you, but it affords you the freedom to live up to it.

The main part of the house is a deep red and I have butterscotch carpet. And I have a bathroom with leopard skin floor, wallpaper and toilet.

I write in the studio.

You don't have to be a rock star - if you don't like the situation you're in, you don't have to settle for it.

Being God would be the ultimate.

If you can make a character likable that's not very nice, that's the challenge of the job.

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.

Celibacy is the worst form of self abuse.

I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

Friends are the siblings God never gave us.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

To cover politics in Washington allows you to live in the very, very wide gap between what the actual truth is, and how people are trying to manipulate the truth. They speak in the language of spin, obsequiousness, obfuscation. The meta of politics is just this endless source of material that can shed light on the psychology of the process.

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists.

Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.

Tact: to lie about others as you would have them lie about you.

I believe very much in a dialogue between buildings - I believe it's always been there. I think buildings have different identities and live very well next to each other. We always have the shock of the new, and that's fine. The renaissance style is totally different from the medieval, and they have a dialogue across time.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

What good is making a jewel if nobody see it? But cost depends on the story. To get those performances in 'Biutiful,' you need that time. You need 60 takes in a scene and a year to edit. It's not realistic to do it any other way.

Geography is the study of earth as the home of people

Those who oppose reform will also tell you that under our plan, you won't get to choose your doctor - that some bureaucrat will choose for you. That's also not true.

Act like a VIP and become a VIP.

If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.

I really like jazz and soul, but I also love so many other types of music, and I didn't want to be afraid to blend and experiment.

The sooner we rein in the red tape factory in Washington, D.C., the sooner small businesses can get back to creating jobs and helping more Americans find an honest day's work.

We have to have the faithful in government.

My brother and I were meditating before we were 6 years old, having to stare at the wall and chant.