I stagger out of bed, take the dogs outside, and then I'll get a Diet Coke and a couple of dog biscuits and go upstairs. By the time I've consumed my Diet Coke and had a quick run through the morning email and Twitter feed, I will probably be compos mentis enough to work.

I've had weight issues all my life. I've been on all the diets: Atkins, liquid protein, Scarsdale diet. Now I go to the gym often. I'm always on the StairMaster, and I do weights.

I am constantly working out-circuit training, jumping rope, and stair-stepping, and sticking to 1200 calories a day. It can't be something that you're doing to lose weight, and then once you do, you're done. I do it every day of my life.

Once I tried to make a standardization of staircases. Probably that is one of the oldest of the standardizations. Of course, we design new staircase steps every day in connection with all our houses, but a standardized step depends on the height of the buildings and on all kinds of things.

Opening day is always so cool to be a part of and to people watch. The Pacific Classic, which I've had the privilege of riding in a couple of times, is great. Every day at Del Mar is fantastic. I love the smells, working out on the beach, running the stairs. It's just a healthy environment. I love it.

We used to listen to Lionel Barrymore do 'A Christmas Carol' on the radio long ago, and I like Reginald Owen, who played Scrooge in the first treatment for the screen. But my favorite Scrooge was Alastair Sim. He was enchanting, an absolutely beautiful performance.

Every year's going to be a what-if. That's the game of basketball. What if a guy turns his ankle? What if a guy gets in a car wreck coming to the arena? There are so many different aspects that could happen that nobody knows. Only the man upstairs knows.

I remember in '37 when trolley cars were so big in New York. It was five cents for a ride... There used to be open-air buses, and you could go up a spiral staircase and sit up on top. Those were great, great days.

A woman is gentle, soft, delicate, and a man's position is to protect her, help her up stairs, make sure she's in the car safely first. Take good care of your woman, and the sky's the limit!

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable.

For my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a plain, unfinished wooden dollhouse. It had six empty rooms, two floors, a staircase, and a door that swung out onto a little front stoop. The windows opened, and the roof retracted on one side, revealing an attic.

I don't want to take the escalators. Give me the stairs that have the dips and the two old ladies that are blocking it and they've got an attitude, and they don't want you to go past them.

My mom's whole side of the family, they're all Packers fans. My mom's a Bears fan. My stepdad is a Vikings guy. So that gets ugly. My mom sits upstairs watching the Bears game; he sits in the basement. They can't watch it together. Football's a violent anger in our family dynamic.

I could talk for seven hours about Johnny Depp. There's no one like him. He has this amazing ability to watch something and then pick it up and do it, within seconds. He'll hate me for saying this, but I don't care. I'm going to say it anyway. He's Fred Astaire. He's this genius dancer. He says that he can't dance, but he can.

They say faith is taking the first step when you can't see the whole staircase. Actually, wisdom is seeing the elevator behind it that would have taken you to the top floor.

"Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

What's the use of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, "There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars." And why? Because it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing.

You cannot take the lift when there is only stairs.

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe -no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside us as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that's just what we do find inside us.

God will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.