My blog is a celebration of the unexpected, settled, happy life I find myself living

in Portland, Maine, at the ripe old age of fifty with someone I deeply love and am very happy with. That's part of why I started the blog.
Kate Christensen

When I'm not working in a professional capacity, I'm writing, and when I'm at home, it's a way of having contact with people or communicating.
Jessie Cave

The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Benjamin N. Cardozo

As a mom, you worry about protecting your kid. But there are extra added layers of fears when you're talking about a kid with autism or who has some special needs issue.
Holly Robinson Peete

Thinking back about throwing myself at certain gentlemen that had no interest in me, that'll bring a blush to my face if I think about it too often.
Gillian Jacobs

Ugly Betty' has definitely helped me cope with issues I would have never been able to cope with if I wasn't a part of a show that has such unique characters.
Mark Indelicato

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me, the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating.
Vera Wang

People expect me to be stupid. I'm not saying I'm Stephen Fry, but it is amazing the perception people have.
Jamie Dornan

I kept my head; I mean, I've never been one of those people who ended up in the gutter with sick in my hair.
Kate Winslet

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally - but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.
Edmund Hillary

There's something else that my mother taught me, public service is about service. And, as her daughter, I've had a special window into how she serves. I've seen her holding the hands of mothers, worried about how they'll feed their kids, worried about how they'll get them the healthcare they need.
Chelsea Clinton

Gemeoss

This battle for 'common-sense' gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason.

All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, 'gun control' legislation. Good news - if you're a crook. Larry Elder I drive a lot. Just for pleasure. Sometimes I'll get in the Cadillac and drive around the city or the country, kind of trying to get lost basically. Y'know, just see where roads lead. Frank Black You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again. Tom Petty We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. J. William Fulbright Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. Mary Shelley Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such fr...

We hope and we've made clear that the forces need to come out. It needs

to be full and complete withdrawal. Our position is it needs to be done as soon as possible so that the elections can be free, fair and free of outside influence. Stephen Hadley Parks said, he's guilty and that's the end of the story. Tommy Bond We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later. Louis Aragon Welcome to the Salvation Army. I've never been associated with an offense so nice about giving the ball away. Hayden Fry I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination. John Keats Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain. Jeffrey Sachs It's nice to get a response from the artists that I cover. Joe Cocker

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive

public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs. Sonia Sotomayor I'm a middle-class, middle-brow novelist. And that's it. It amuses me. Anita Brookner I have always had a very natural connection to the water, and that connection stems from the ocean itself. Aaron Peirsol I got married at a very young age, and of course, for all the wrong reasons, and ended up divorced and lost everything. It was a very difficult time in my life. Willie Aames We have 11 great potato flavors, and customers have been clamoring for tortilla. For over a year, we worked to develop the four flavors of tortilla popchips: chili limon, nacho cheese, ranch and salsa. They're made with traditional stoneground masa, are gluten-free, and have less than half the fat of other chips. Keith Belling I never won anything by myself. I was always strong because of help that gave me extra strength to win. Dan Gable There's a toxicity within gaming culture, and also i...

If you're going out for a meal with friends, and they say they can't afford

to go to such and such a place, you can't force them to afford it. Phyllis Logan When people go to rehab and come out, they go through a difficult period, but I never had that. Elton John When I got a call to do the voice of Johnny in an episode of 'American Dad' titled 'I Can't Stan You,' it was a great opportunity to be a part of a really funny cutting-edge show on television. I really got into the character, and I was able to do some improvisation, which allowed me to mix in part of my personality into the script. Paul Butcher When you're in a crisis of, you know, tremendous proportions, it's beyond any human capability to control, you just make the best decisions you can, and you just hope that your intuition is correct. Rudy Giuliani I have no ethics when it comes to art. You just do what you can to make it as beautiful as you can. James Mercer In elementary school, I loved the 'Bailey School Kids' series. It was about a group...

If the Republican Party continues to take the view that there must be no tax

increases, we're stuck. Capitalism can't work without safety nets or fiscal prudence, and we need both in a sustainable balance. Thomas Friedman I think Katie Price is a really good businesswoman. She has made so much money. Georgia Salpa I can work my butt off and create an album that's wonderful, but if it's never played and never given the outlet, it won't succeed. Tessanne Chin Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists. Bonnie Raitt Doing my art came out of something very solitary and something that I had no intention of showing anybody, and yet once people saw pieces in my house, it became really clear that there was a great demand for my art. Paul Stanley I had the belief that many troubles you could observe on the Eur...

If you're 50, you're never going to be 50 ever again, so enjoy being 50.

If you sit through the year wishing you were younger, before you know it, it's going to be over, and you're going to be 51. Julianne Moore I've tried to approach environmentalism the same way I do my climbing: by setting small, concrete goals that build on each other. Alex Honnold When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it. Tim O'Brien In the United States, after World War II, it took about two decades for the message to slowly seep in that inflation was going to be a permanent fact of the American way of life. Murray Rothbard Pot barley takes longer to cook than pearl, but an overnight soak in water will speed things along. It's a robust grain that, if overcooked, won't collapse but will become more tender. Yotam Ottolenghi Everywhere in Africa, you see Indian, Chinese, Brazilian businesses. Other than Coca Cola and the oil companies, it is very rare to see American businesses. Mo Ibrahim That is the ...

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge

of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. Edmund Hillary I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're often participants. Adam Davidson When you have a voice, and you have an opportunity at the world level to be able to speak, it has to be right. Caitlyn Jenner The Chinese, as befits a Communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. Shashi Tharoor My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my ...

If you change because of fame, that's not the right thing. But if you change

because of growth, that's normal... The whole fame thing hasn't hit me. And I hope it kind of doesn't. Jussie Smollett I've never paid attention to politics. I only have the vaguest notion of what the IRA is. Nicholas Haslam When I was 16, I was like any other boy at that age who dreams of having a good physique. Rohit Shetty Usually when I am approached to do a score for a horror movie, it's to attempt a repeat performance of what I did way back on 'Hellraiser' or 'Jennifer 8' - one of those really orchestral scores. Christopher Young When people ask me if I have worked for the C.I.A., I often answer: what good to you is my answer? Because if I did, I might not say so. Robert Littell Many children with cancer in the developing world can be cured. But without appropriate treatment, few survive. Caitriona Balfe We used to have to arrange things around the dialysis. I would have to plan where to play so I could be back in time, and co...

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want

to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that. Chris Cornell Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. Eckhart Tolle If you talk about an issue, what comes back is a description of what you're wearing. Reporters only want to know how tall you are and if your teeth are capped. Robert Redford Pay off your mortgage before retirement, and that's one less bill you'll have to worry about when you're on a fixed income. Suze Orman When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie. Ridley Scott My personal ambition remains the same - to be crea...

If we're going to reach a broader audience, we have to stop thinking about that

audience strictly in terms of teenage boys or even teenage girls. We need to think about things that are relevant to normal humans and not just the geeks we used to be. Warren Spector I'm a huge Dallas Mavs fan. What I love about Dirk Nowitzki is he has just as much talent as everyone else, if not more, and he never toots his own horn. He's this silent warrior. Erin Wasson We have no chance to comprehend what goes on there - it's so dramatic, and people are so poor. We all felt bad about being there. Filming in India felt like we were going to borrow something knowing that we were never going to give it back. Mads Mikkelsen Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. Certainly, without a camera a drone can't function, which means that the very ways in which we wage war are determined in part by how cameras work and whether they work at all. Judith Butler I have this soft spot for have-nots. So, I was re...