Don't forget Mother's Day. Or as they call it in Beverly Hills, Dad's Third Wife Day.

The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver.

Major league baseball has asked its players to stop tossing baseballs into the stands during games, because they say fans fight over them and they get hurt. In fact, the Florida Marlins said that's why they never hit any home runs. It's a safety issue.

My little brother and grandma told me I could sing. I used to sing in church, too. Not like in the choir or anything, but for people around the church... on the church bus going home and Christmas plays.

I used to sing in church, too. Not like in the choir or anything, but for people around the church... on the church bus going home and Christmas plays.

My grandma was so old-fashioned. She thought we were supposed to have homework every night. I would come home, and she would be like, 'Where's your homework?' and I'd be like, 'I don't have none.' She'd be like, 'I'ma call your teacher.'

If there's three boxes that say 'Single', 'In a Relationship,' and the third one says 'Getting Money', I'd check the third one.

An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.

Adults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.

A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus.

I think the fall in Eden was ultimately a failure to give thanks.

In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But stress can be an addiction, and worry can be our lunge for control, and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ.

Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.

The loneliest ebb of my life came on that Christmas eve, only one day after my arrival in New York. The abyss of loneliness. I ate a solitary dinner in a small cafe, and the very food tasted bitter with my unshed tears. One doesn't dare cry in America. It is unmanly here.

Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.

To generalize on women is dangerous. To specialize on them is infinitely worse.

I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I'm having a good time. I can't really write anywhere else.

Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn't start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children's books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children's books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with them.

I think our job is to trust our readers. I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen. I think our job is to love the world.

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.

Once I found out that I was playing 'Deathlok,' I unearthed my old comic book collection. I was going home for Christmas, and I have a collection of thousands of comics. I was surprised to see that 90% of them were Marvel. So, I wanted to go through my collection and start there.

My mother, she had a very good attitude toward money. I'm very grateful for the fact that we had to learn to save. I used to get like 50 pence a week, and I'd save it for like five months. And then I'd spend it on Christmas presents. I'd save up like eight pounds. It's nothing, but we did that.

My father Bill had a problem with Christmas. Although he appears in old photographs to possess a whippy, muscular frame, he was actually a frail man and usually managed to cause some kind of drama just before the festivities began.

My bedroom was filled with reading material: books salvaged from dustbins, books borrowed from friends, books with missing pages, books found in the street, abandoned, unreadable, torn, scribbled on, unloved, unwanted and dismissed. My bedroom was the Battersea Dogs' Home of books.

I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life.

Every day I wake up and I really try to pinch myself to take advantage of today and to use that freedom of gesture to do what I really like to do.

Once you trust in yourself, you automatically want to go outside of yourself.

For me, art really starts with acceptance, self trust. Wherever you come to with art, it's perfect. You don't have to come with anything. What you bring to something is the art. That's where it's found. It's found within you.

I think about my work every minute of the day.

I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I'm a messenger.

I've got some incredible fans actually - so loyal and they make me birthday cards and Christmas cards. I got this package of poems and artwork based around the songs. They've got this thing called 'Floetry' where they all have to put in artwork. They've set up their own competitions and stuff which is kind of amazing.

It would be too frightening for me to consider myself a role model. But I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

I'm completely in love with the world but also terrified of it. It creates some overwhelming feelings. Wanting to battle out that joy and fear is part of my music.

I've always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes.

I try to write lyrics so that they won't age, which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.

The Teenage Cancer Trust does incredible work supporting and caring for teenagers and young adults with cancer, and it's a cause that is really close to me and my family.

Music is my way out. I keep things locked up and never say anything. I guess in order to say something to one person, I have to sing it to a couple of thousand. It doesn't make for healthy relationships.