happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for.

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?”

People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.

The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

99% of your thoughts are useless.

You have the ability to decide what you think. Or, you can choose NOT to think.

“How do I train myself to stop thinking useless thoughts?” Awareness. That’s where it starts. Every time you start drifting off, become aware of it. Just observe your brain. Step outside yourself and just observe the crazy shit you’re thinking about.

Set priorities on Sunday. I outline my weekly priorities and what I want to have accomplished by the following Sunday.

Map out work, play, fit, and push. Work: For each day, I outline my “Top 3,” meaning the three most important things I will have accomplished by the end of the day.

Play: Play enables me to self-express, reflect, and give my ideas space, which shows up positively in my work.

Fit: Movement keeps ideas moving forward so I aim to move my body for at least 30 minutes each day.

Push: Since learning and growth is important to me, I do something that scares me (almost) every day. This may be asking someone whom I deeply respect for an interview or writing about a topic that makes me feel vulnerable.

Batch your days. Batching actions into specific days and creating time for creativity.

CREATE on Monday/Wednesday/Friday: I create holes in my schedule for thinking and creating. On these days, I pay attention to my body and take breaks as needed.

CALLS and MEETINGS on Tuesday/Thursday: When possible, I avoid phone calls and meetings because I find them typically unproductive and often easy to solve via email.

SPONTANEOUS Saturday: With so much structure, I make room for spontaneity. On Saturday, I let go and go where the day takes me. Balancing structure with a day of free-spiritedness makes me feel whole.

INTENTIONAL Sunday: Plan for the week ahead.

Politicians, ideologists, theologians and philosophers try time and again to provide solutions with nothing remaining: prefab solved problems.

It is incumbent upon us to respond to the unique needs of military women and ensure they receive proper care during the first year following childbirth.

Girls especially are fond of exchanging confidences with those whom they think they can trust; it is one of the most charming traits of a simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the happiest women who never lose it entirely.

Those who can bear all can dare all.

Gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect the public against gangsters and lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? The abnormal prevent development of the normal.

It's just never been in my nature to go out there and go on a red carpet to say, 'Oh, publicize me!'

People were expecting Rouge to go bankrupt, so there was a lot of anxiety. The corporate culture problem was even worse than in Russia. And at the same time, the work rules were more difficult.

Chicago is the greatest of all baseball cities. I make no exception, although I have been treated well wherever I have been. It is the greatest city because the fans will stick to a loser season after season. I have had my share of defeats, so I should know.

I'm proud of the fact that the Republican Party is the pro-life party on the issue of life.

Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead.

Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world's elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress.

A relationship without trust is like a car without gas you can stay in it all you want but it wont go anywhere.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.

If my life were a song it would be called 'Don't Stop Believing'. Yeah.

Then I got the offer to play Buck Rogers, but I turned it down thinking it was a cartoon character. Well I was wrong, it wasn't at all. So I read the script and decided I liked the character, it had a good concept.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.

The guy who says, 'I love the challenge of managing,' is one step from being out of a job.

I like all my characters in one way or another, or at least I understand them.

There are contemporary artists that I hate with all my heart. These are provocateurs that are without feeling. Where is the real emotion?

But you must be patient and careful; nor should you expect to become an accomplished archer without long and severe training.

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

It's our potential for good stuff I'm most interested in exploring, but that has most meaning when juxtaposed with things that can go wrong.