Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace

- tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.
Jon Meacham

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
Voltaire

As is said about most writers, on the one hand, all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.
Elfriede Jelinek

If your goal is to be the biggest movie star in the world, a 10-movie contract is gold. It was never my goal. Up until now, I made movies - and I have a nice house, a nice car. I'm fortunate, happy and grateful. Life is good.
Chris Evans

I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.
Meghan O'Rourke

It is funny because the guy who is my boss now, Howard Stern, has a similarity there. He got big being a regular guy. He wasn't the greatest looking guy in the world.
Artie Lange

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Don't believe that winning is really everything. It's more important to stand for something. If you don't stand for something, what do you win?
Lane Kirkland

In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song 'Vivrant Thing' and 'Breathe and Stop' off the 'Amplified' album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.
Q-Tip

Gemeoss

Urban Outfitters - I love it. It's almost like Forever 21, but for, like, the

24- to 25-year-old girl, getting a little bit older. Keke Palmer I'm the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for. Kirk Cameron I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses. Leonard Susskind Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. Joshua Roman Space X's Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with modules where earthlings can live. My teleporting technology is the number one way those individuals will get new information, new treatments of diseases that will occur on the planet, and new food sources. Craig Venter Brain cells are normally not sensitive to light. So by introdu...

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be

to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit. Robert Zemeckis There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. Jill Scott I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please. Jane Fonda For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American. Nora Roberts Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I...

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing

one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person. Rick Santorum We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not. Michael Bloomberg Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know. Leslie Fiedler If you ask me why I've succeeded, it's because I was in the Royal Marines. You have this unbelievable sense of achievement and of overcoming adversity. That's the confidence it breeds. Brian McDermott I don't really plan to be a pop star; I just want to be able to make music without the wh...

For years I've been seeing my young brothers wearing Scarface T-shirts, John Gotti T-shirts, Rick

James T-shirts. We don't have any icons or idols to look up to, just rappers and professional athletes. Lamar Odom As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban. Clive Sinclair I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering. John le Carre I want to be a chef, but I'm only a fat girl chef; like, I only like to make fat comfort food. I'm not, like, a healthy chef person. Khloe Kardashian At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that. Bono What matters is being a particular kind of person. At the most basic level, it matters that you are the kin...

First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant

about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong. Steven Van Zandt The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts. David Leavitt If you're going through friendship issues, I would say, first of all take a step back. How important is the friendship to you? Sometimes, if someone's not being a good friend to you and isn't treating you the way you should be treated, then you kind of have to move on sometimes. Victoria Justice Things are going very smoothly. As expected, there are some minor glitches, and the eight minutes that it took us to get to orbit, we trained months and m...

My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a

fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood. Beth Ditto We have met on a solemn occasion, and in this crowded assembly there is one thing that appears important, that is, for every one of us to be still, that if any thing should he said, every one may the better hear. Elias Hicks We're going to shoot one Polaroid per show. I'm going to sign this before it even develops because I know that once it develops with my signature on it, it's worth a fortune. I'll make this a work of magic warlock art. Charlie Sheen There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals. Jonathan Safran Foer I'm sort of an old man, a...

In the morning, I have certain aspirations. One of my goals is to avoid looking

at the computer or checking e-mail for at least an hour after I wake up. I also try to avoid alarm clocks as much as possible, because it's just nice to wake up without one. Matt Mullenweg At Sequoia, upwards of a hundred entrepreneurs a week present, and if we're lucky, maybe a dozen of them are focusing on the enterprise. Jim Goetz I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture. Claire Denis I don't feel a real need to specify the meaning of something. When I was little and I was introduced to Led Zeppelin, I didn't know what a zeppelin was or who Zeppelin was or what the machine was. The real meaning is whatever feelings and memories you attach to the music. Kyp Malone St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet - as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of w...

It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your

kid to war - your daughter or your son. Tim O'Brien When you're still in the broadcast business, you're still trying to reach tens of millions. You're trying to still aim for a broader audience, and I think that's a more difficult task to spread yourself across that audience, connect with them, as opposed to a very, very small, pinpointed audience. Difficult to do. Warren Littlefield I did this film with Russell Crowe called 'The Water Diviner,' which took place just after WWI. It was fascinating because the weapons between WWI and WII were very different. I had to learn how to ride horses in a battle setting. It was important that we rode a certain way. Jai Courtney My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener. Curtis Mayfield I realized that if I don't like something, I can change it. If I don't feel comfortabl...

If our inconceivably ancient universe even had any beginning, the conditions determining that beginning must

even now be engraved in the atomic weights. Theodore William Richards I can watch an episode of Jerry Seinfeld, and by the end, I'm just walking around my house, you know, talking like Jerry Seinfeld. 'What is that? What are you doing? Who is it? What's going' - you know, I just had that thing, when I grew up, I'd just start talking like people. You know, I always had that. Jimmy Fallon One of my early childhood memories was my grandmother always having a bowl of Nestle chocolate bars at her house. My sister and I would argue over who could eat the chocolate bars. Looking back, I don't know why we just didn't share. We could have split them. Carla Hall This is what I believe about performing: There is no reason to be on stage - there is no reason to be there - if you're not going to put all your baggage somewhere else and just be honest. Whatever you're doing - screw it up, do great - just be there, and be honest. That's the most importa...

The developing countries must be able to take a more active part in trade negotiations,

through technical assistance and support from the developed countries. Anna Lindh There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago. Robert Redford As a teenager, I didn't want to be me; I wanted to be many different people. Maybe I realized that they all lived inside me and that if I managed to connect with them, they would become aspects of me. Marion Cotillard If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: 'fair,' leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life. Charles Krauthammer I'm not sure I have a natural gift. I think it's just that some people have an easier time expressing their emotions, maybe because of the way they've been raised, and I've always bee...