I find the violence in PG13 movies unbearable. This kid will never run home, never have another birthday. His death is slow, nightmarish. And you have to explore the consequences - the people who live on with this death.

When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter's body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.

My one thing is respect. I don't care about anything else. You should respect everyone around you - the people who work for you, peers. Be classy.

If there's intelligence behind an opinion, then I'm all for expressing it, but I would never just start a fight with someone for the sake of it - that's just not me.

I see music in colours. I love music that's black, pink, purple or red - but I hate music that's green, yellow or brown.

I always think about fashion when it comes to making music and music videos... what the colours will look like, what the material will be, how will it work with the sound of the music.

I made video art for quite a long time, and I made this video covering myself in burgers and dancing to Major Lazer and doing covers of Britney Spears songs... I can't remember how I got there, but my teacher said he'd have to fail me because it had mild nudity.

I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.

My father started growing very quiet as Alzheimer's started claiming more of him. The early stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest because that person is aware that they're losing awareness. And I think that that's why my father started growing more and more quiet.

To me, Ann Romney sounds like a better candidate than her husband. She put her MS into remission through horseback riding, alternative therapies, and a healthy diet. She knows how to pace herself. She has a sense of humor and an innate honesty, and her hair moves in the wind. Maybe she should run.

It was a big pleasure to play a Grand Slam match on my birthday.

I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthday. And in the year that followed, I learned that there are many psychological phases of being 'let go.'

I am a marathon worker and marathon mother. I'll spend three or four days completely swallowed up by work. And if I make it home in time to say good night, I may have one good hour with the girls, maybe a brief family dinner or a family walk with the dog, and then it is back on the computer to prepare for tomorrow's shows.

I don't want to impose rules on people, but you have only a short window, and you're sorely mistaken if you think you can put off having a family. It's very hard to find a good man, and it's never a 'good time' to have a baby if you have a career.

I suffered from a mild case of postpartum depression after my second child and the physical challenge of maintaining an overnight shift at CBS, a marriage, and two in diapers made the symptoms worse and everyone in the house paid the price.

I think women have a hard time not apologizing their way into negotiations. We tend to back in to these conversations in a self-deprecating and ultimately self-defeating way.

The needs of babies and toddlers were constant and drained the life out my sense of self and my family's relationship with each other.

I try my best to be extremely disciplined about my diet.

I had a birthday one night on a farm we were shooting on. I walked into the tent, and there were 150 people waiting for me, all wearing masks of my face.

'Down on Me' can't showcase my true talent. 'Birthday Sex' was robotic. When I perform it, I can't give you this church feeling I know I can give.

When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta bechamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce.

Lidia Bastianich, sorry, but kind of boring. I mean, I love Lidia, but you can fall asleep watching her. And Mario Batali? I love Mario to death... but he's not romantic or sensual. Those are the things I bring to the table.

These days it's cool to be ethnic and to be different, but when I was a kid, it was not cool - at all. My friends would come over and my mom would make crepes with eggs, stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and spinach. And they'd be like, 'What is this?'

Every time I think I have something under control, it changes and I don't have it under control. I think it takes several years to get there. Jade is 19 months old, so right now I'm on alert all the time. And as a mom I think you're constantly worrying about things.

It helps immerse yourself in what you potentially want to do. Being involved, learning firsthand and observing the craft and absorbing all you can, makes it easier to define what you want. It will also ultimately make you a better Chef. Culinary school, or even a single class, is a great bet too.

Attitudes toward food have completely changed.

My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.

I'm into very colorful food. Obviously lots of flavor, but I think we eat with our eyes first, so it has to look great. The presentation has to be great.

Food brings people together on many different levels. It's nourishment of the soul and body; it's truly love.

When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.

What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos.

For months, people have been asking my views about the Scottish independence referendum, and I've been saying, 'It's not my country; I don't live here. Much as I love Scotland, I think it would be inappropriate to express a personal opinion regarding Scottish politics'.

In a great many stories that deal with time travel, there's usually somebody who knows how time travel works. They lay out the rules.

I have all the time and space in the world when I write a book.

I stagger out of bed, take the dogs outside, and then I'll get a Diet Coke and a couple of dog biscuits and go upstairs. By the time I've consumed my Diet Coke and had a quick run through the morning email and Twitter feed, I will probably be compos mentis enough to work.

I went by Kyle, and I made friends on the team as Kyle. It went on for a pretty long time, until I went to a birthday party in a dress and all the hockey players were like... 'Kyle?'

You are not just a funny person or just a journalist. Most people are hybrids of having a smart opinion and a great sense of humor.

My parents were dishonest people. If it was my birthday, I knew my mother took me to the K-Mart and she stole my toy. She'd put it in the shopping cart and we'd walk out. I was raised with that.

I don't trust or love anyone. Because people are so creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere.

My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

The cool parts - the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as 'the Vegas of the Middle East' or 'the Venice of the Middle East' or 'the Disney World of the Middle East, if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert' - have been built in the last ten years.

The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual.

A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.

As a result of America's efforts to realize the ideals of equality and freedom, blacks in America are now the freest and richest black people anywhere on the face of the earth including all of the nations that are ruled by blacks.

A university is not a political party, and an education is not an indoctrination.