Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.

God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.

I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.

I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.

It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.

I'm a man born to blood and pain, and peace would be a killing blow for me.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Why do early risers always take that self-righteous tone?

That is the greatest source of my anxiety on this film [The Hobbit], is that I'm going to be lynched.

Learn to love what you've been taught to fear.

If there is continuity in the universe, it is fitting that there should be intelligent beings without bodies which are called angels.

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?

I sang with Anita Bryant in the Southern Baptist churches.

I often meet young directors who, you know, had a 'Ghostbusters' picture on their wall as they were growing up. And it's really nice. It just shows how inter-generational our industry is.

I am such a gearhead. In my recording studio, I personally engineer and edit everything on computers.