I have the responsibility of over four million people and I am in a position to do good to be able to bring about a new life for my people and I will continue to move in that direction. It's a burden but it needs to be done and you have to have the courage and wisdom to see it through.

Success is not measured by what you accomplish but by the opposition you have encountered and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.

I was 35 years old and in a position to take a shot at whatever I wanted to try. The Air Force said I was too old to fly fighter jets. I thought about becoming a fishing boat captain before deciding that acting seemed pretty cool.

When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet.

I think I'm drawn to more villain-type characters because it's so cool to get to say all the things you want to say. In Hollywood you get to this position where you have to bite your tongue so much. You take all your experiences of not being able to say what you really want to say and channel that through your character.

Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm he's cool he's self-possessed. In many ways he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy often undisciplined emotionalism.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

On the political front of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions you bring 10 women in then it's 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy the number of chairs can actually increase.

I'm not going to change the world overnight. It's one person at a time and hopefully they're people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really truly embrace colorblind casting.

Maybe one day the world will change that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals but the question doesn't matter right now.