Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it.

I have no way of knowing how people really feel but the vast majority of those I meet couldn't be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year's resolution is not to bark back.

At one time I smoked but in 1959 I couldn't think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped - and I haven't had a cigarette since.

At school there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts.

My father died when I was young and I was raised by my grandmother Emma Klonjlaleh Brown. We could afford to eat chicken just once a year on Christmas.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier Christmas Day of 1982 just after I had been first elected to a full term that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

From the time that I can remember I worked to make money - either baby-sitting or one year wrapping gifts at a department store at Christmas so I could have my own money.

When you have kids you instantly feel that you do not want to do them wrong. Those dads that go off to Florida and start a new life I couldn't imagine that: seeing my kid once every Christmas every three years. If I'm gone for six days it feels like too much.

To me as long as we've known each other I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.

The biggest risk I've ever taken is going on American Idol and trying to be myself. I wasn't going to try too hard to conform and I knew that it could possibly not work out.