Fiction connects: past and present; the great and the small; the surface with the depths.

Fiction brings out the innermost, invisible springs of life that cannot be revealed in factual narratives.
Varley O'Connor

We may like to think politics is a battle of ideas and that the best idea wins out. But that's not true in most elections. Most elections are about the worst ideas losing, not the best ideas winning.
Chuck Todd

I used to be obsessed with game shows. When the Game Show Network became popular in the late '90s, I was all about reruns of 'The Price Is Right.' I knew all the prices from the '70s.
Kate Micucci

I felt like onstage I have to have a certain amount of anonymity, like, personal anonymity, to feel loose and free. When you're up there with people who've known you for a decade, and you make a bad joke and you hear the cackling behind the drums, it's hard to get lost in the moment.
Jenny Lewis

The real test of business greatness is in giving opportunity to others. Many business men fail in this because they are thinking only of personal glory.
Charles M. Schwab

I think the documentary is something that people are hungry for, that it embodies careful thought, nuance.
Beeban Kidron

The rehearsal process is the most important thing to me, so working with colleagues who are effusive, thoughtful, young and vivacious is really inspiring as a musician.
Susanna Phillips

My first-ever visit to a cheese factory was in Tillamook Washington... yes, I am that nerdy.
Kyle MacLachlan

Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.
Jules Verne

Gemeoss

Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn't mean people

have stopped reading books. Printed books won't go away, but ebooks won't go away, either. David Morrell The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it's very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk. Bill Gates My individual power is limited. I want to use my high-profile way to wake people up to take action together to do good things. I can only awake them with my performance art and creativity. Chen Guangbiao Your conscious brain cannot multitask. If I'm speaking to you and checking my I-Phone at the same time, I'm doing neither. This is why our society is frazzled; this misconception that we can consciously do more than one thing at a time effectively. Deepak Chopra When I'm not acting, I'm at the beach. I like to spend a lot of time in the water, surfing. Brenton Thwaites While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination. Kevin Spacey Shorts wager on p...

The reaction to 'Aftermath' has been far worse than to 'A Life's Work,' yet I

find I'm perhaps a little less touched by it. In both cases, I've coped artistically by believing the criticisms weren't right. They upset me, but they didn't challenge my understanding of how to write, nor of how morality functions in literature. Rachel Cusk I'm not one to take revenge. If someone does something wrong to me I leave it in the hands of the universe to take care of that person. Lana Parrilla At the end of the day, I think that I'm making music for me as that 12-year-old kid in front of my boombox every day. I try to think about, if I'm that little kid, what would he like? Danny Brown I can't see where there is anywhere left to move. If you don't have a recount it's hard to receive any more votes. Robert Torricelli I have no friends and no enemies - only competitors. Aristotle Onassis I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatr...

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue

the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah. Meir Soloveichik A sequel is such a daunting thing, because you don't want to lose the magic and the charm of the first one. Sandra Bullock Having a loving relationship with our spouse or with our children is what leads to the long-term happiness we all seek. Clayton Christensen My finding of myself as an artist, which I think in itself helped me to find just who I am and how I want to express myself, is entirely - in conjunction, of course, with my family, particularly my mom - founded on teachers. Uzo Aduba Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?' Sophie Hannah I very much want to do things my way, and I want to control the result. Hiam Ab...

Remember that we can only in our forebrains handle 5-7 items. Our backbrains can handle

massive amounts. So when you're given a problem, think about it before you go sleep, and chances are you can solve it by the next morning. Nolan Bushnell I got one letter at the very beginning, like, in the first season, saying - from a woman who was very religious, very Christian, saying how wrong she thought the show was, but she thinks it's the funniest show on television. Sean Hayes The way I look at - speaking as a woman - I understand what it means to be a daughter, and to be a wife, and to be a mother, and also to be a career woman. The multiple roles that women can play in a society if given the opportunity is really a tremendous asset. Margaret Chan Being chronically shy I needed to create a persona for myself and be involved with a band where I could be ruler of my own kingdom. Then Pulp became hugely popular and I lost control of it, which is when it all went wrong. Jarvis Cocker The advanced levels which the democratic world has attained at the end of le...

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in

a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. John Henrik Clarke I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters. Susan Orlean I don't inflict horrors on readers. In my research, I've uncovered truly terrible documentations of cruelty and torture, but I leave that offstage. I always pull back and let the reader imagine the details. We all know to one degree or another the horrors of war. Alan Furst My nutritionist has done a great job in changing my diet after we established I am allergic to things like gluten - I can't eat pizza, pasta and bread. I have lost some weight, but my movement is sharper ...

While the past asks only to be remembered, a woman's memory alters on her behalf

and in her best interests. Memory - the vain old biddy - cannot resist penciling a few slight, cosmetic revisions in the margins of the past.Sarah Ban Breathnach Between 1958 and 1963, I sold about 40 million records - to the shock of my mother and father because I was always playing Beethoven. But I bought my mother a mink stole. She was very happy, and she said, 'I think this is better than Beethoven.'Neil Sedaka I am a huge advocate for anti-bullying in our youth. What I have seen with the rise of social media is that children are not facing bullying on a playground, they are facing it on their cell phones.Whitney Wolfe Herd I enjoy fighting. It's one of my favorite things to do in the world, so I'm just enjoying every minute of it.Donald Cerrone No American should have to live in constant fear that their employer can fire them just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.Jared Polis There's a lot of stuff out there that government s...

Just to be involved in anything Disney, whether it's 'Avengers Assemble' or 'Planes' or straight-to-dvd

work, it's great. Roger Craig Smith You don't have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it'll go. Yogi Berra My favorite hobby is matchmaking. It's a lot easier to do it in movies then in real life because in real life, people don't do what I tell them to do. Susanne Bier If not doing VICE, I probably would be selling Cokes on the beach in Vietnam. I like the sea. Shane Smith One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't. Michael Arrington I love everyone over at Netflix. They're all fantastic and an absolute joy to work with. Aaron Paul What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook - it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetab...

The primary reason that I'd be here or that Don Payne Jr. would be here

is for you to know that members of Congress actually exist and are human. Rodney Frelinghuysen I always get stopped by security and immigration, telling me, 'Tell me who the terrorist is, or we won't stamp your passport!' The last time that somebody did that to me - at LAX, actually - I was like, 'Hey, don't ever ask a brown girl that in an American airport!' Priyanka Chopra I was constantly being told I shouldn't talk so much about how I was feeling. They seemed to think I was giving too much away to my competitors. Showing signs of weakness. But I've always thought that was rubbish. Victoria Pendleton Women in the post-Fifties world were appendages. They existed to serve men. Their lives and concerns didn't matter, except insofar as they impinged on Important Male Things. Judith Tarr Our employees chose SK on belief that they will be happier working here and that the company will make the society happier. Chey Tae-won I've never ...

Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places

which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in. Emmeline Pankhurst I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as. Damien Chazelle Personally, sometimes I'll lament the journey of an Asian-American actor, walking into audition rooms in 1999. Kelvin Yu When I was a little kid, it was not uncommon for a cousin or an uncle, before they would even say 'Hello,' to gush, 'You know, your mother's brisket is just incredible; it's so good.' That was an inspiration for creating a love song in that well-worn terrain of the relationship between a Jewish boy and his mother. Rick Moranis I happen to be the kind of reader who, if I like something, I don't want it to end. Gar...

I've kind of had to make a career of playing villains. In order to stay

employed, I had to figure out how to play bad guys. Jeffrey Pierce I am basically in awe of every family's ability to make decisions for their kids. Rebecca Stead I was working my first adult job, a quasi journalistic job, writing content for a website. In the offices, we had banks of TVs, papers, a constant media stream, which was unusual for 2001. Garth Risk Hallberg My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore. Athol Fugard Journalists should have been the first to tell people what Obamacare would mean to them. They are now the last to figure all of this out. Rush Limbaugh We all want to be a little glamorous, a little playful and a little mischievous at times. Jason Wu No, I don't think I'm ever going to get serious. Blake Shelton I'm into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think...