The building of friendship family community and love is complicated. We are so isolated in this country no longer supported by tribes and villages.

Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.

Emigration forced or chosen across national frontiers or from village to metropolis is the quintessential experience of our time.

Giving women education work the ability to control their own income inherit and own property benefits the society. If a woman is empowered her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper the village prospers and eventually so does the whole country.

I belong to the generation of workers who born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society.

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

When I'm in town on Sundays I sometimes go down to the Central Bar in the East Village to watch English football. But my natural inclination now is to get in the car with my wife and kids and get out of town.

Remote villages and communities have lost their identity and their peace and charm have been sacrificed to that worst of abominations the automobile.

We need to become good citizens in the global village instead of competing. What are we competing for - to drive more cars eat more steaks? That will destroy the world.

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.

So we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene that it just became its own thing.

The magic kit we developed with Idea Village is an extraordinary success in 40 000 stores across America. The TV commercial we shot for it has produced amazing results - unbelievable.

I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression thought he could be a movie star. So go figure you know?

When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.