I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point you ain't interesting.

We had a military and political leadership at that period which was genuinely deluded.

I think most Americans understand that we went through a period in which American leadership was judged quite critically internationally.

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.

In the Atlantean period there were many energies being used and information and knowledge being used which were for particular reasons of safety withdrawn shall we say to prevent complete catastrophe to prevent total destruction of your planet.

We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap the missile gap.

Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact as of the writing of this column millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.