Whatever God has planned for me, that's what's going to happen.

I am drawn to leaders who set out to make positive changes in their communities.

I wouldn't wish overnight success on anyone. You have no real friends. Everyone works endless hours at different studios, so far apart. Even on your own lot, relationships were formal and often...

When I see things through my eyes, I don't want to ever just be really negative towards someone's performance. There are many ways to skin a cat. Sometimes I watch the guys, and they're doing...

I think confidence is a true form of beauty.

You don't just luck into things as much as you would like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it is friendships or opportunities.

For a book to function... it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real, and I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who is in deep cover.

Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.

I'm a little bit anally retentive, a little bit OCD, but a whole lot clean.

I find it more consoling to think of myself as little than to think of myself as big. I think I've gotten that from animals, particularly dogs. Dogs live such a modest life, and they don't live long,...

Basically I write songs, and I need for there to be a home for these songs.

I think you have different soulmates throughout your life.

The most important thing, I've found, is to be self-reliant.

When we built Amblin, we even put Murphy beds in there because we thought that was so practical. Why would anybody, if you were working on something, need to go home at night? You'd just stay there,...

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

I've never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that.

I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious cook. I am a plain old cook.

I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood.

We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.

One of the most missed components of the entire insurgency in Iraq was that Syria and Bashar al-Assad facilitated Al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. They actually headquartered the Iraq Ba'ath Party and...

We're also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

You have to learn how to write each book.

Countless black citizens in the South couldn't vote. They were second-class citizens from cradle to grave. The discrimination was terrible, brutal.

The system becomes logically closed when each of the logical implications which can be derived from any one proposition within the system finds its statement in another proposition in the same system.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No...

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

I injured myself politically when I took on Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential campaign. I was too strident. I didn't recognize the emotional tie that he had with all black voters.

I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.

Everything, everything, everything! I want to know everything. I want the privilege of being a crone.

Cats are anthropomorphised in art because they are so laid back that you automatically attribute human thoughts and feelings to them.