I can remember when I was National Security Adviser, the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force.

I have always known my mother as an agnostic, less certain than my father that the universe hadn't been created by some great intelligence. But she would get even more annoyed than my father did when she thought that people were invoking God to do their jobs for them - for example, when she saw a bus with a sticker saying 'Allah Protect Us.'

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

By now, you've probably caught on to something: my mother is always standing by with just the right Scripture or inspirational saying to get me through any tough situation.

For years, I've worn my dainty gold bracelets with inspirational sayings and encouraging one-liners to motivate me in my career. I liked to look down at my wrist and be reminded of my goals.

Nowadays, you can't broadcast dodgy special effects and then put up a caption saying, 'Sorry, this is what the budget was.' You have to do it with high production values because the audience has been spoilt by the special effects on things like 'The X Files' and 'Independence Day.'

The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

If you got a good imagination, a lot of confidence and you kind of know what you are saying, then you might be able to do it. I know a lot of colorful characters at home that would make great actors.

Yes, I was correctly quoted in saying I introduced sex into films in the 20's, but it was sex in good taste and left a great deal to one's imagination.

People are always saying it's the end of the Gutenberg era. More to the point, it's a return to an oral era. The Gutenberg galaxy was about the written word. At its best, the digital era is part of the rediscovery of the oral. At its worst, it's a Kafkaesque victory of the bureaucratic over the imagination.

Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, 'Just watch!'

In Buddhism, they say attachment to anything only leads to suffering. So when we laugh, it's our way of saying, 'I'm unattached to that.' You're tickled by it, it makes your lobes do something on their own. So humor is very important to me. I always take that to the stage first.

To this day, I've found that it doesn't matter what a guy looks like if he's really funny. His sense of humor makes him attractive. On the other hand, you don't hear men saying, 'No she's not pretty, but is she ever funny!'

I hate to say it but I hate black humor. I feel like a Klan member saying it, but it's just not funny.

If I had to describe my sense of humor, I would say it's contemporary wit, you know what I'm saying?

My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

I think that when you get dressed in the morning, sometimes you're really making a decision about your behavior for the day. Like if you put on flipflops, you're saying: 'Hope I don't get chased today.' 'Be nice to people in sneakers.'

I was in New York City and my sister and cousin came out to see me, and I brought a guitar on stage. But all the audience wanted was for me to play so they weren't listing to anything I was saying, I bombed hard. On the cab ride home, my sister pulled a sticker off the cab and put it on my guitar which I still have today in my man cave.

To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a 'home' might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.

All I'm asking for is the law that's been on the books for the last 33 years, no public funding for abortion. We are both saying the same thing, pro-life, pro-choice. Let's find the language that works for both of us so we can pass health care.

If you stand at an election and put a manifesto in front of people saying you're going to improve health care, you have to stick by that.

There is an old saying that money can't buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.