What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far far from it but there is no free lunch as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President I never will.

I felt very unstressed on my wedding day. I'm very grateful for that... spending the day on my own being super quiet and happy and just puttering around doing my own thing.

I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs.

Spending when the math's not there and the numbers aren't there and if they look in the social security trust fund it's filled with IOUs because the government's been pilfering it for years on end. We have to do something. We have to start having this discussion.

Will some reporter or some Republican on the Sunday shows please ask why tax cuts raid the non-existent Social Security Trust Fund but all the Democrats' new spending doesn't? Will someone please ask that?

Domestic travel and tourism-related spending has reached $1 trillion a year.

I'm not comfortable being preachy but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.

But when I was a teenager the idea of spending the rest of my life in a factory was real depressing. So the idea that I could become a musician opened up some possibilities I didn't see otherwise.