I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I think there have always been funny women from Carol Burnett to Joan Rivers. When the audience sees a woman they innately know she's worked twice as hard to get there she's had to prove that she can be the leader first and then be funny on top of it. She has to emit a confidence that she's in control.

Fitness will be a major factor in the first race and I think that will play into the hands of drivers who have been racing recently rather than people like me who haven't raced properly for a decade. I'am not one of the favourites to start with.

In the rich world the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States the most important environmental indicator particulate air pollution has been cut by more than half since 1955 rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved and forests are increasing.

There are 4 billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market vendors rickshaw drivers and others who've historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give them a freedom from want.

Strivers achieve what dreamers believe.

I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast including living life too fast that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time I make sure I leave early enough.

Before computers telephone lines and television connect us we all share the same air the same oceans the same mountains and rivers. We are all equally responsible for protecting them.

People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around you're like Oh my God I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.

I get appalled when I see good drivers being left on the sidelines because they haven't come up with the half million to a million to put themselves in a competitive car.