They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

It isn't false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work.

I don't have a problem with recognition... It's very, very rarely about who I am, it's always, 'I love your work.'... It's always in relation to my work, which I think is a really lucky thing to have happen as opposed to, 'Oh, you're a famous personality.'

Right before the Bush inauguration, many women were greatly reassured when Laura said of Roe v. Wade on the 'Today' show, 'No, I don't think it should be overturned.' Three days later, her husband reimposed the 'global gag rule' on groups abroad that receive U.S. funding for family planning.

This is probably why, my life is easier, and my family is very happy, because we never lie each other. This is probably all people supposed to feel each other, so be always in all of the world they'll be peace.

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.

Dollywood is a family park, and all families are welcome. We do have a policy about profanity or controversial messages on clothing or signs. It is to protect the individual wearing or carrying them, as well as to keep down fights or problems by those opposed to it at the park.

To be honest, I'm a little upset these days. My family has been exposed to the media. Some people break into our house. My ex-girlfriend's photos are circulating online. To say that these are things I need to endure for the sake of celebrity... that's sad. I want to respectfully request that my private life remain private.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.

All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race - racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic - what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.

I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. I don't think I ever had a single discussion with my parents about faith. It was just something gently imposed.

Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.

As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything.

Their lives have been largely defined by failure and you would think the prospect of marriage, which is supposed to be bountiful and hopeful, it's just really another kind of tangential thing in his life.

Mr. Gonzales' failure to respond to questions legitimately posed to him by the Senate raises grave doubts in my mind as to his fitness to serve the people of the United States as their Attorney General.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

As is well known, 'McCarthyism' was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: Accusations of Communist taint, without factual basis; bogus lists of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.

Is the proposed operation likely to succeed? What might the consequences of failure? Is it in the realm of practicability in terms of material and supplies?

Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

I would find it difficult to be involved in an effort that I think disenfranchises people from a fundamental right. How do you work with people who are opposed to marriage equality? I don't want to do it.

Imagine a world, if you will, where crime does not exist. A startling proposition that seems outlandish, but our imaginations, of course, need not be bounded by the rules and restrictions imposed by realism. It would be a world, one might suppose, where equality reigned, where the thought of violence was so alien that it need not be practiced.

All this talk of equality remains merely on paper. In real life, women are still bound by several psychological shackles and emotional boundaries imposed on them by their families and others. If a girl comes home late, she is asked 100 questions, whereas boys are not answerable for anything. And this prevails across segments.

Feminism is nothing but equality, and actually, feminism benefits men because it liberates us and it releases us from many stigmas imposed by the macho culture on us as well. So if more of us could understand that it's nothing but equality, I think many agendas in terms of equality would have advanced quicker because it really helps us as well.

What Republicans need to do is to go back to their roots - starting with Lincoln - and remind the nation that they are the party of national growth, racial equality and unity of purpose. These Lincolnian themes will serve Republicans - and the nation - much better than becoming the party on the lookout for the supposed rat head of higher taxes.