Sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is... the highway to success.

My advice would be to write what is most personal and specific to your experience or your life. And your voice will emerge and because of its specificity it will be universal.

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Let me start by emphasizing that I am open to efforts to expedite environmental procedures for true emergencies or in other clear cases where current laws are needlessly burdensome.

Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.

Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments it is apt to emerge again and again independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'

Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject.

It is not tolerable it is not possible that from so much death so much sacrifice and ruin so much heroism a greater and better humanity shall not emerge.

When my dad was badly weakened by the flu and my mom wanted to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room he wouldn't go unless he could shave first and change into a nice shirt and a pair of slacks.