Perhaps the single most important thing for a child is to be with a loving,

supportive family. And all things being equal, any child of any race should be placed with any qualified parents without restriction or special conditions.
John Ridley

'Napoleon Dynamite' blew up my career.
Efren Ramirez

The people of Gaza are trapped. Israel has sealed the border, and they have no way to leave the Gaza Strip to do business.
Richard Engel

No one believed me when I said it was possible to put fabric in resin.
Reem Acra

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
Langston Hughes

Things don't really impress me. Memories impress me. It's not the toys, it's the people.
R. A. Salvatore

With man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.
Maria Montessori

Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.
Robert Downey, Jr.

As for the like of Hillary Clinton, I - you know, I've covered Secretary of State Clinton before. I covered her during her campaign. And she's a very likable and charismatic person once you get the chance to spend any time close to her.
Michael Hastings

We had been busy building up fibre infrastructure under the ground in Hong Kong and underneath the homes of people, so when we launched IPTV, it was relatively smoother sailing than in other territories.
Richard Li

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...

I'm not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail

stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics. John Paul DeJoria My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that. Emeril Lagasse If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn't you feel that way now that he's President Obama? You know there's something wrong with the kind of job he's done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him. Mitt Romney Well I travelled quite a lot in the east, and one of the things that impressed me greatly was the buddhist notion of the continuity of things, the wheel of life which is what we're talking about,...

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...

I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest

optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties. Douglas Southall Freeman Being attacked by right-wing Christians did not bother me. Being attacked by liberal feminists did. Hugh Hefner I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word 'marriage.' Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights. Ani DiFranco 'Drive' is a genre piece, and a lot of times we don't get really sophisticated genre films. Oscar Isaac I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line. Elizabeth McCracken I love the way little kids dress themselves! They're completely carefree about how others perceive them. Gillian Zinser I think it's a mis...

I'm very comfortable in my own skin now. I started just being myself more and

more. For women, this happens as you get older. I loved my 40s - I thought they were fantastic. And I'm loving my 50s. I'm going to love everything because you're either older or dead! Gloria Estefan Zynga is about fun. Fun is important. Fun is good. And to have the ability to do something fun for 10 or 15 minutes that's right at your fingertips and involves your friends, well, that's better than television in terms of social connectivity. Reid Hoffman We're not done yet, but two things WordPress has been able to exemplify is that open source can create great user experiences and that it's possible to have a successful commercial entity and a wider free software community living and working in harmony. Matt Mullenweg The basic idea in case-based, or CBR, is that the program has stored problems and solutions. Then, when a new problem comes up, the program tries to find a similar problem in its database by finding analogous aspects between the problem...

I never really got on my own case about my own acting. I know a

lot of other people have, and probably very justifiably. But I don't worry about stuff like that too much. Troy Donahue I was made fun of in the Midwest - I was the only Asian in my graduating class of 200. Fortunately, I found my niche, and it was fine. But I wanted to be so white, you wouldn't believe it. I was like, 'I want to be white; I don't want to be this anymore.' But now I embrace it. Reggie Lee Developing a diet that is healthful, balanced, and appropriate for your particular caloric needs is easy enough and is absolutely critical to establishing a healthful lifestyle that incorporates proper nutrition, adequate fitness, and mental resilience. Daphne Oz As I have found out, recognition has its upside, its downside and - you may say - its backside. Pippa Middleton The radiation was worse by far. I had bandages all over my head. I looked like a mummy. On the side of my head and neck and down to my collarbone, I had second-degree burns. My skin b...

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...

The consequences of President Johnson's campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been

more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself. Eric Alterman The worst moment was when I was performing and I was about to sing, but I choked. I had a tickle in my throat and I started coughing, and I couldn't get the words out. It lasted for like thirty seconds, but I got over it, and luckily the crowd didn't seem to care. Chris Brown I feel like I am a lot of who I am because I watched these shows that said it was okay to be a total weirdo. Shows like 'Pete and Pete,' 'Hey, Dude,' 'Salute Your Shorts' - that's what I grew up with. Mae Whitman All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death. Ray Winstone As a children's author, reviewers are generally very nice to you. I only ever wrote one adult...