One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken completely tranquil the same ebullient laughing jovial man.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

I just find the evangelical church too well restrictive. But the School of Practical Philosophy is nonconfrontational. We believe there are many forms of Scripture. What is true is true and will never change whether it's in the Bible or in Shakespeare. It's about oneness.

Come come leave business to idlers and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty and pleasure my occupation and let father Time shake his glass.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.

He who is incapable of feeling strong passions of being shaken by anger of living in every sense of the word will never be a good actor.

I started running outside when I was at 'Biggest Loser.' Then I got runner's knee and thought I was never going to be able to shake it. When I overcame that and ran the L.A. Marathon it was such an amazing thing and now running is such a part of my routine.

It's amazing how age after age in country after country and in all languages Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

A book is sent out into the world and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible Homer Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.