"Being a songwriter requires versatility while being an artist requires you to create a cohesive body of work. I truly enjoy both."

“My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called 'opinionated' is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish. My only hope is that, one day soon, women who have all earned the right to their opinions -- instead of being called 'opinionated' will be called smart and well-informed, just like men.”

Source : "Hardball with Chris Matthews", www.nbcnews.com. July 27, 2004.

“By the way, it was his simulations that helped out in Jurassic Park - without them, there would have been only a few dinosaurs. Based on his techniques, Industrial Light and Magic could make whole herds of dinosaurs race across the screen.”

“If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.”

“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”

“It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.”

“A person experiences life as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness.”

“Kant is not saying - about freedom or any other subject - anything of the form: "Not-p but we must assume that p." That's close to self-contradictory, like Moore's paradox: "p, but I don't believe that p".”

“It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.”