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Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Particularly black Americans, many of them, from quotes that I have seen and conversations I've had, are sort of insulted that the civil rights movement is being hijacked - the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is being hijacked for something like same sex marriage. Black Americans tend to have a higher degree of religiosity.

For me, I met my husband when I was going full steam ahead of what I wanted in my career. We sort of intersected and were like, 'Oh, hi, hello!' We were both on our way somewhere to speak and then just kept going together.

I'm going to be doing solo stuff. The idea is to do 'small' and 'off my beaten path,' or go back to an old, beaten path - do some smaller things that I haven't done in 15 or 20 years. Just to sort of get my feet wet, because I haven't done my own material for a couple of years - I've been doing a lot of other things.

I use the NordicTrack every other day for 20 minutes. I don't listen to music or watch TV while I do it. I count to myself. I count to 25; I count to 25 backwards, that sort of thing.

It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.

My years on 'SNL' had reconfirmed that what I do best is play for a sort of edgy comedy.

I wouldn't say that I'm actually trying to cause chills in the audience, but certainly my goal is to, at the very least, effect a physiological response - at the most, to effect some sort of state change, ideally, in the audience.

To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.

Reading 'Moby-Dick' was really a sort of transformative literary experience for me.

It's kind of like trying to make straight lines from curves, but involving shapes that sort of dictate what the curves are, if you like, and the difference between two separate pieces creates a third transitional piece if you like.

Well, you know... I grew up in postwar Britain, when you were lucky to get anything to eat. People in America have absolutely no conception of how austere England was after the war. While you were all sort of eating butter and eggs, we were eating rabbit. That's what there was in the butcher shop.

People simply don't have room, physical room, to keep, for instance, 2-inch tape in the sort of quantities that are required to hold a full archive. It's not just a matter of having three or four boxes, it's 40, 90 boxes of 2-inch tape, and very few people have the resources that sort of stuff properly.

Bluefin tuna is sort of like the cheetah of the ocean. It's the fastest fish. It's a warm-blooded fish. But it's got a $100,000 price tag on its head.

Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.

By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.

When my first husband died, what I tried to do is to sort of, you know, try to bring some rationale to the circumstance and think about worse circumstances, and also open the door to what other women experienced when all of a sudden they were left alone. And particularly if they had children.

On becoming a mother, I sort of feel like every kid is my kid. I really do get that sense in a much more profound way that we all are a global community and we all have to band to try and give the children of our this generation whatever tools we can to go out into this world and try and make it a better place.

When I finished school, everyone wanted to go to a good university and become a lawyer or a doctor. My A-levels were sort of chosen for me.

At a certain point, you try to avoid reading feedback or blogs because there's always the risk of reading some sort of negative stuff that can be hard to hear.

I think the way I sort of approach it is, you just sort of keep your head down and focus on what you are doing and making shows that people will want to see on Thursday night.

If the public can't see justice being done, or afford the costs of justice, then the entire system becomes little more than a cozy club solely for the benefit of judges, lawyers and their lackeys, a sort of care in the community for the upper middle classes.

But as you say, the fundamental stumbling block is the question of the future of the economy. And it's not just the sort of economic laboratory question, of what kind of system would best generate growth, which is the way it's presented.

After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

For me as an actor, you always sort of want to bring yourself to a character in some way. You want to find a way to approach something in a way that's real and interesting, and also so there's some empathy there.

I drove right into the music with the same sort of attitude as I went into the football stuff with. Just found a routine and hard work, and it helped me progress a lot faster.

Looking back, I just think I was a really average sort of girl.

I've sort of made up my mind that I have to do my career and I have to be a mother. These are my two responsibilities; of course the baby comes first.

It's one thing if you live in London and you're rooting for Chelsea or you're in New York and you love the Giants or Jets and no matter who's on the team you're into it. It's different in tennis; you're sort of your own guy, so you have to reach out and grab a person in a different way.

I don't know if every player in the Premier League feels hurt when they lose a game. The right sort is very important. I was naive in thinking that everyone was like me.

I have trouble describing my own style, since it's sort of like describing my own eye color or something.

Many movie stars or American Idol contestants sort of fall into theater... and say, 'Oh, yeah, I would love to do theater.' And then they get here and say, 'Oh, wait a minute, this actually is a craft!' It's not just show up one day and do it. It's show up eight times a week, twice on Wednesdays and twice on Saturdays.

It's drama, it's a lot of things, but you know it's always about every movie or every TV project ever made is meant to be watched. If people like it and support it, that's what it is all about, really it's sort of the important part about it.

I think it's fascinating to look at a world that an author has created that has sort of stemmed from the world now, and usually dystopian books point out something about our current world and exaggerates a tendency or a belief.

Men of prayer, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth. No other sort will fit in the scheme or do the deed. Men, great and influential in other things but small in prayer, cannot do the work Almighty God has set out for His Church to do in this, His world.

Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don't think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they're going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.

I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an autobiography about my quotidian life.

You know, I think Jesus was famous and also in a lot of trouble because he always chose people over sort of established procedures.

I take it for what it is, and sometimes the criticism is actually useful and constructive and actually informs what I do, but most of the time, it's sort of mindless, or they're receiving something on a different frequency than I was sending it.

Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it.

We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.

It is crazy. It's our first kid, and all of a sudden, she identifies letters as what they are, and you go, 'This kid is a genius - she's obviously some sort of savant!'

Certainly, we all have within us the potential to live in a hugely different way. And how happy you can make yourself, I think, a lot depends on how much you beat yourself up about that; and how much you can, in some sort of providential way, console yourself and say, 'Well, it's all worked out for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.'

I allowed life to give me presents. And everything just sort of happened the way it was supposed to happen. I did not pursue anything. It more or less pursued me.

And I think people who sort of glibly say, 'Well, you know, they're not going to handle security, UAE is a great ally,' four and a half years ago, they were not an ally, they were working with the enemy, and if those same people are still there today that were there then, these are real serious issues.

I moved to a city and joined a sort of fast crowd. A lot of people who grew up in the city sort of aren't aware of manners and other ways of life and 'common decency.'

There are so many different kinds of relationships, so it's sort of difficult to define what is considered normal.

The music industry over there seems to treat America like it's one territory even though they got offices in different parts of America - they're still quite sort of 'America is the territory.'

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

Military officers from different countries, when they meet each other, tend to sort of fall in love, become mutual admiration societies, at the expense of realities.

The 'Moonlighting' tension of the couple that obviously never can get together, there's an innate sort of fun and tension in that.

A friend of mine told me a bunch of stuff on Buddhism and about Avicii being the lowest level of Buddhist hell, and it just sort of got stuck in my head. Later on when I went to setup a MySpace, I tried a bunch of names and they were all taken so I just kind of ended up with Avicii and then I got really attached to it.

Of course, you see your body changing as you age, but it's more important to live than be too preoccupied with that sort of thing. I think ultimately what people care about in other people is the energy, the spirit.

Why, in such a case, should the performer essay any sort of considered approach at all?

The Twenties have this sort of attitude where you never know what's around the corner.

There's this sort of male energy that we have that can seem very destructive. But it doesn't have to be. It actually can be a very positive force.

The Academy Awards were basically created by the industry to promote pictures. They weren't really to acknowledge the performances. Then it became sort of this a great popularity contest and now, it's an incredible show and it's seen all over the world.

I've been a supporter of green initiatives for years. I've been paying more and more attention to it, you know, with three kids. I thought it was tragic when the Kyoto Protocol was killed by the U.S. It was sort of a call to action.

But obviously you don't want to just be the guy who comes in and sort of spices up every movie. So yeah, definitely moving into more of a leading man role would be great, but on my own terms.

I've sort of made a reputation by high-stepping my way out of genre. As soon as somebody says, 'He does this,' I'm not standing there anymore.

You create your life, and you can recreate it, too. In times of economic downturn and uncertainty, it's more important than ever to look deep inside yourself to fathom the sort of life you really want to lead and the talents and passions that can make that possible.

I was sort of born into a Subud cult that has ties to Islam and Indonesia and Middle Eastern spiritualism. My parents were kind of trial-and-error when it came to religion.

When I discovered that I could tune into American radio stations after dark, this was the hippest thing to me. It sort of saved my life.

The question is, you know, will someone accidentally build a robot that takes over from us? And that's sort of like this lone guy in the backyard, you know - 'I accidentally built a 747.' I don't think that's going to happen.

We have a queen-size bed and the dog sleeps in the middle. John and I are sort of these little quotation marks on either corner.

I think when you're 14 years old, I think you're sort of looking for markers that prove you're an adult and you're independent of your parents.

I started freelancing for the Associated Press. I had a great mentor there who sort of taught me everything.

Once you have a child, that becomes your life, and while that's the way it should be, I sort of have a love affair with my work. Having said that, many of us work far too hard and we don't put enough value in the epicurean, sensual part of life.

I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as much as I loved making it.

By the time you have your protagonist attempting to assassinate the Pope, you've sort of signaled that everything is on the table.

We need to go to the niceties of approaching the U. N. and let them have a chance to take it over, but we should set some sort of date and begin to move out and leave it to whoever takes over.

I studied law at university and was sort of grooming myself to go into that kind of career. I filmed 'The Wedge' while studying, which was very difficult, but I'm proud I completed my degree.

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.

Originally I wanted somewhere to set my short stories about the sort of people I recognise having grown up with. Carnbeg was staring me in the face all the time, only I had somehow failed to see that. Not seeing the wood for the trees, I suppose.

I'm sort of shy, and Twitter feels like chatting all day with a group. I like to follow people. I'm following Joel Osteen, Steve Martin, and an anonymous purple egg - just to see where they go with it.

In the Einstein way, I can't believe in a universe that doesn't have some sort of prime mover, identical with all of created nature. I have a whole lot of a harder time with supposing the fine print of the Torah was a direct revelation.

I can't bear to look at Paris Hilton and all that. I mean, it really doesn't grab me. I don't think she's interesting, and the sense of values seems sort of off-kilter.

The uniqueness of the unit was more or less that it was focused on a single individual. It was really the first time the agency had done that sort of effort.

There is that idea of seeming crazy when you're seeing spirits or you're seeing dead people, you know what I mean? There's a certain sort of stigma, a sort of kookiness, when it comes to that.

The temptation in any approaching crisis or conflict is, because people haven't got a clue what lies ahead, they're always searching into the past for some sort of pattern ... to galvanise the nation or their supporters and put themselves on a pedestal to sound Churchillian or Rooseveltian.

I have one anecdote about the FBI breaking into an embassy in Washington, and under Hoover, they had this sort of ruse whereby they didn't want to recommend a break-in that might be a big flap and cause all kinds of problems.

I go through life accumulating possessions... I've always done it... and then, every once in a while, a sort of tidal wave comes along and washes them all away.

I don't really go into labels or an in-depth discussion of different value systems because for me, it's sort of the truth of the situation in D.C. Certainly, in my fictional depiction of it, there are decent, shameless people on both sides at every level.

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money.

We're more into sort of fluid structures that are simultaneously the most efficient, the most beautiful, and the most engineered. You know what I mean? We like the balance you can get in there.

I don't get distracted until the weight of other things left undone finally tips the balance; my mind is flooded with calls, bills, supermarkets, letters, and I have to stop and sort things out.

I love music. I love every kind of extreme sort of music, and many different genres, and if I were to have to dedicate myself to just one kind of genre, I would feel kind of gypped. I'd be like, man, I wish I could do this or that. And really all it takes is trying it out.

In a way, being born is a sort of ecological contagion. When you have longevity of family, we remember our grandfathers and maybe our great-grandfathers. We somehow don't have the capacity in modern life to remember further than that. All of the ramifications of their lives have an effect on us, and we're not aware of it.

I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder... So yeah, that's pretty profound, when you're not expecting it, you didn't particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore.

Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?

What happens is that the people who are leaders in any field are copied. I mean, there's a reason why every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who's been successful, so they sort of copy these same ideas.

I knew from the start that I wanted my life to be about music. I taught myself the notes of the piano aged three, and then I spent the next few years deconstructing chords to figure out how to play them. At 11, I researched online the sort of music school I wanted to attend, printed out the details, and handed them to my parents.

To do a television show, one can be sort of spoiled. You get to have your own trailer, your own space - that sort of thing.

I guess, for me, I've always thought that there was humor everywhere. And as a kid, I just, you know, I grew up an only child, and I - sort of nothing made me happier than to make my parents laugh. I remember I had costumes and things laying around the house that I was, you know, anything that I could do to make my parents laugh.

The simple answer is I'd just be a guy trying to feed my family, like everybody else. The complicated answer is, I think I'd be in some sort of military or government world of some sort.

It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, 'Is your company for sale?' and if they said 'No, we have no interest in selling,' that was sort of the end of the conversation.

There is a sort of genre of optimistic science fiction that I like, and I don't think there is enough of. One of my favourites is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 'The City and the Stars.' It's set in this far future on Earth in this somewhat static society and trying to break out.

Words aren't very good at describing complicated, strange visual things. You can try, and the reader will have some sort of image in their mind, but words aren't good at that.

Some people seem to sort of have a gut for hiring. I literally had a gut that was exactly the opposite. So whenever I thought someone would be great, it was sort of the opposite.

Both the 'Gregor' series and 'The Hunger Games' are what I call lightning-bolt ideas. There was a moment where the idea came to me. With 'The Hunger Games,' the lightning bolt sort of hit at a moment when I was channel surfing between reality TV and the coverage of the Iraq war.