I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect because it's every day anyway no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems or sometimes not.

I truly respect the people who are working. If they want an autograph from Patti LaBelle they are going to get it. I have never separated myself from them. I never think you are better than the next one.

That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.

I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own.

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go as I say more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

I like messing around and I like working with artists who I respect.

If I don't talk about my religion if I say I'm not discussing it or different humanitarian things I'm working on they're like 'He's avoiding it.' If I do talk about it it becomes 'Oh he's proselytizing.'

We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress which played a big part in his administration's problems.

I've been working on Barb for a while. I looked at her as a sort of every woman. She's incredibly strong she's incredibly generous. She's seemingly insane because she is in the situation of a polygamous relationship but she had definite reasons to do it.