Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And he's almost indistinguishable now from the English language. I have no sense of what Shakespeare is like. I have no sense of the personality that is Shakespeare. I think, alone among writers, I don't know who he is.

People often think that you have a sense of humor because you think that life is funny. Life isn't funny at all. It's appalling and tragic.

Whoever has once been truly unsettled by a work of the imagination will never give loyalty to a single idea, belief system, religious faith or party.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to enjoy the propinquity of play. For it is the very freedom of the imagination. And what else were we born to do, but imagine freely?

There's a simple arithmetical logic at work. Build more unaffordable and not always architecturally sympathetic apartments, watch the rents rise, the tarts leave, the small shops, production offices and design studios close down, and hey presto, we have another fashionable London suburb indistinguishable from the rest.

Many medal winners dream of competing in a sport other than the one they're famous for.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

I really hate the duties of being a celebrity, like getting dressed up for the red carpet.

I've never been speed dating! I sort of wish I had, just for the experience of it.

As a child, I didn't know what I didn't have. I'm thankful for the challenges early on in my life because now I have a perspective on the world and kind of know what's important.

I have a lot of trouble understanding how people see me as a celebrity. I work 14 hours a day, and then I just want to talk to my family, see the people I love, pet my dog, and go to bed. I'm not looking to be best friends with or emulate a celebrity.

I never wanted to be famous.

I get recognized, but I'm not really a famous famous.

I feel like soundtrack music is almost like seeing the movie again, but with my ears.

What's the two things they tell you are healthiest to eat? Chicken and fish. You know what you should do? Combine them, eat a penguin.

I have an imagination because my life is so boring that my imagination lets me get off the reality of what's going on.

Ever since Obama's election team and media thugs made me famous for asking a simple question in 2008, I've had more than my share of death threats by people who are by definition at least a little crazy.

Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government.

It's an American worker's right to unionize for sure, but that being said, don't expect me not to point out when or if union leadership takes advantage of union members.

Becoming famous is a strange thing in your own right.

My husband and I are best of friends first and foremost. We fight like cats and dogs, but never stay mad for long. I was lucky to find him, he is in every way, my soulmate.

I have to be a teacher to my daughters.

I can never really enjoy being famous.

I work in politics and media, two industries that have been particularly affected by the issue of misconduct. We have seen famous and powerful men finally pay a price for behavior they got away with for decades. Many have lost their positions and status - rightly so.

I believe in the redemptive need to admit mistakes, express regret, and ask for forgiveness.

Denying that the issue of marriage equality has changed is being on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of love and commitment.

Hypocrisy needs to be called out in American politics, and the absurd has reached the point where it is just insufferable.

I've spent many hours on national TV talking about politics and current affairs, including sexual harassment and the #MeToo Movement.

Although I was born to famous parents, I know and feel the problems of ordinary citizens.

My father offered his life so our democracy could live. My mother devoted her life to nurturing that democracy. I will dedicate my life to making our democracy reach its fullest potential: that of ensuring equality for all. My family has sacrificed much, and I am willing to do this again if necessary.

As far as same-sex marriage, I really would want to think about that a lot more given the fact that my focus would be always on the child. The innocent should not be given more even burdens than what is absolutely necessary.

My administration's compact with the Filipino people will demand no less than the attainment of lasting peace and equitable prosperity. We will employ all the tools at our disposal to achieve this.

I had a simple goal in life: to be true to my parents and our country as an honorable son, a caring brother, and a good citizen.

Pictorial is something that I am not used to. You have to pose, smile, bend your arm, straighten up, look to the left.

Ever since grammar school, I knew I wanted to be famous - I always wanted to be a singer.

I hope that when I'm 80 years old, people will still be talking about my wedding.

There is nothing I love more than my role as a mom.

It's one thing to lose weight, but it's another thing to eat healthy.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

It's difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesn't matter if you're talking vampire movies or 'Dawn of the Dead' or 'The Thing' or 'Escape From New York.' Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it.

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies.

At every turn, when humanity is asked the question, 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss, which one do you prefer,' we invariably choose the money.

When you've finished reading every last thing by a famous writer, literary convention holds that you move on to his or her letters, the DVD extras peddled by publishers.

'This Is Not That Dawn' is remarkable in part for its careful and sensitive attention to women's lives - and also for its harsh critique of men and their failure to stop violence.

The thing about a failure is that it is possible to deny it forever.

When we talk about 9/11 and 26/11 - which is the shorthand for the Mumbai attacks in 2008 - we're talking about the most successful terrorist attacks in history. When you start trying to study the most successful event of its kind, it actually doesn't make for great fiction because there isn't the kind of failure in it that fiction thrives on.

Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'

I remember returning to Bangalore after a few months of travel and seeing it as a first-world city, like New York or San Francisco. This may be obvious to some people, but I grew up in Delhi, and I had no experience of how someone from a 'Tier 2' city may view a 'Tier 1' city. You really do emigrate between worlds when you come from those towns.