I was emotionally and physically punched in the stomach. This is not a place where you go and deliver the lines and then you come back. It's kind of a life-changing experience. But it can't get better than this for any actor - this is like an opera.

Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot but it can't access the hidden places.

History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times but out of trial and confusion.

We can not continue to allow this over reliance on government to replace the cornerstone institution that has made the American experience possible.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces which represent 30% of our musical experience.

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child forget it.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience having gone through persona changes like that that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces but which all experience refutes.

No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.