When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I

expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.
Maria Semple

As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Tariq Ali

Children are wonderful, but they are not the center of the universe. The sooner their parents make them understand that, the better off we all will be.
LZ Granderson

The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive.
Timothy Noah

My mom was the center of my support system, that place I always went to talk things through, whether I was feeling joy or fear. She was always there with a huge, open heart and the best advice.
Corbin Bernsen

I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.
Asif Kapadia

I came from nothing and achieved humungous fame and fortune. But I worked hard. I had discipline and determination. I had that ice in me.
Sugar Ray Leonard

I'm drawn to people who find themselves on the outside of things. I'm moved by that in real life.
Rachel Joyce

Even with protection, even with death threats, I can publish, I can travel and I can live the life that I want and not the one my parents want or some imam somewhere thinks I should live.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity?
Mike Nichols

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...

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,...

IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place

for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues. Ginni Rometty I am going to get political on you. Because I am the most shallow person in the world, my mission is to see men's formal wear change a little bit. It is too rigid! Everybody looks like a penguin! Steven Cojocaru I was able to get operated on four days after I was diagnosed. It was just a matter of getting this baseball-sized tumor out of me. I reflect now on how lucky I was to be in the situation where I could get the best possible help and treatment. Eric Davis If it's time to party, it's time for hip hop. I love Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye. If I'm chilling at home though, I'm listening to Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Radiohead, DJ Shadow. I also listen to a lot of classical. Alexis Knapp Indulging in unrestrained and immoderate laughter is a sign of intemperance, of a want of control over one's emotions, and of...

In orthodox film-making, you never shoot sequentially - but with improv, obviously every move you

make has a knock-on effect; it is a cumulative process. I have improvised, on the non-scripted 'Timecode.' It can become entirely indulgent: actors smashing crockery and competing verbally. Saffron Burrows Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat. Phillip Noyce I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. Kazuo Ishiguro Some people come out going, I don't get it. And I don't quite know what they're trying to get, what they're struggling for. We have had the reaction where people leave the movie sor...

The Microsoft actions announced today are exactly the kinds of industry initiatives we need. Microsoft

is using its resources to bring real privacy protection to Internet users by creating incentives for more websites to provide strong privacy protection. William M. Daley I've always thought that it's good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that's how consensus is constructed. Barbara Kruger To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. Joseph Conrad When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman. Jean de la Bruyere I am committed to strengthening our agricultural economy by protecting the unique interests of small and medium size family farms so that they can continue to operate. Sue Kelly It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself. Johann Wolfgang von G...

Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's

why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all. Julian Baggini Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned. John Ridley At the time of my second marriage, my husband was in his early 50s, I was in my mid-40s, and we each had two kids. We maintained our individual accounts and opened one for the house. We each kick the same percentage of our incomes into the house account and have a joint credit card. But we pay for our children separately. Jean Chatzky It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Espe...

Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of

the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would often nod off. Not so when I'm online. As technologies expand, these problems may only worsen. Sendhil Mullainathan To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I'm the kind of person who likes to create the environment and mindset - not because I do it deliberately, but because that's how I like to live - where, from catering to makeup to hair to wardrobe, electricians, camera department lighting, sound, you know, it's our movie; we're together, and we have that camaraderie and that closeness. Steven Rodney McQueen There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro. Elliott...

We have become 99 percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and

within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts. George Washington Carver Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder. Abraham Lincoln My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated. Joyce Carol Oates It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous. Lynda Barry Certainly when, you know, you put a lot of creative people together, there's ego and tension and all that stuff comes into play. But on the flip side, there's a lot of camaraderie and closeness. Darren Star Nobody can understand the pressures of doing an hour-...

The economic dimension is very clear. I was at a dinner party, a mother got

up, who's a very distinguished scientist, and said she had to get home and help her daughter with her homework. The two waiters, their faces changed. They were working their second jobs, they couldn't get home to help their kids with homework. Donna Shalala The kind of doctor I want is one who when he's not examining me is home studying medicine. George S. Kaufman It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father. Benedict Cumberbatch Awareness has changed so that every act for children, every piece of legislation recognizes that children are part of families and that it is within families that children grow and thrive or don't. Bernice Weissbourd As a female pilot, the sacred rose garden in my heart is the motherland's blue sky. Liu Yang Fundamentals make the market. T. Boone Pickens I was always more interested in story songs, things with a point of view... and things that informed me. Nanci Griffith When I attained a certain advanced ...