There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally the movies hide all of that.

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

Before I was married I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking large ambition and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity.

I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience what goes on inside someone's head that being all they really know of the world.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

What if Barack Obama established a Presidential Advisory Committee that would meet once every couple of months bringing together the former presidents for a conference in order to seek their collective wisdom? There is a wealth of experience in former presidents that generally goes untapped.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal or having any import to the world at large as opposed to men's work which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park even after many many hours spent there with them and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog these nameless non-strangers will rally sympathize offer to help and hold your hand. I know this from experience.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.