Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

I've always been very much in control of my music and my image, and I think one of the things I've been lucky about is I didn't bring a label on board until I really figured out who I was.

I would enjoy sitting in a rocker... listening to soft music and contemplating the things of the universe. But such activity offers no challenge and makes no contribution.

In addition to needed gun control reforms, America urgently needs a stronger protest movement dedicated to reducing the glorification of violence in our culture - in music, film, television, video games, and even the Internet.

There will always be excuses, arguments, and questions of timing when moving on difficult and controversial issues.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can't let our circumstances or what others do or don't do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

There's a constant level of risk in farming that so few movies let you feel. I wanted to show some of that, but also, by contrast, reflect on how nature so often offers grace.

In the movies, I kill guys with an axe. In real life, I can't control a nine-year-old girl.

I often begin movies with music in my head; it's a very important dimension to me. Not just the music itself, but how to use music in film: when and how and subtlety. I don't like to be too sweet in my stories, and I like the abrasive clang, the contrasting of sounds and cultures.

But I like schlocky violent movies, but I'm for strict gun control. But then there was a time I was at a laser tag place, and I had such a good time hiding in a corner shooting at people. In other words, I'm your basic confused human when it comes to violence.

Making movies is controlled anarchy, chaos.

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

In live action movies, you just hope that everything works. Because the actor may had a bad morning and doesn't play good, or accidents happen continuously. Many things contradict what you are trying to say. But in cartoons, nothing contradict what you want to say.

I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.

I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

I wake up in the morning thinking about victory, I go to sleep thinking about victory, so sometimes it might be hard. But I need to control myself more and, how can I say it politely? Just shut up instead of speaking on the radio.

Good morning is a contradiction of terms.

In the Premier League, the money is a problem, but I don't really know how to control it.

I had a great shoe contract and glove contract with a company who paid me a lot of money never to be seen using their stuff.

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal.

Remember, either you control your money or it will control you.