It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century.
If I'm shopping at the Gap or Old Navy, I'm saying that I'm an ordinary person: I don't want to be seen; I don't want to stand out. That's a statement. If I'm wearing a leather jacket, there's something about me that's kind of a rebel. So everybody says something, whether they want to or not.
For me, the difference between an 'ordinary' and an 'extraordinary' person is not the title that person might have, but what they do to make the world a better place for us all.
Personally, love is very important for me. There are lots of ordinary things in life, so love should be extraordinary. I hope I achieve that.
I need quick, easy, and healthy meals that can power me through the day. I also try to eat locally grown and organic food as much as possible - it's the best for me and the environment.
Everything that's happened to me is happening very organically. It's nothing that we paying for, nothing that we asking for.
For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person.
I don't work all the time. That's why I waited to have children until I was ready for that. I try to organise my time according to them because they need me. I don't want to put my work first anymore because it's not as important as my children.
My Calvinism persuades me that we are open to God, in the sense that we are not delimited, not organisms with fixed attributes in the manner of the other creatures, but are instead participants in a reality that utterly exceeds our powers of description.
I worked extremely hard at my craft and at being a good songwriter, being a good guitar player, being a good organist, because I didn't think people would take me seriously.
My grandma was a church organist for 40 years, and she got me into jazz music and great songwriters, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, all those folks. I can't do it, but I have a profound respect for it.
At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.
It's important for me to show my children the richness of life and be a role model. I find that my organizational and management skills are tested more at home than at work!
If you want to remember me, organize!
There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion, and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions.
I'm not really into religion, OK. I saw a lot of things I did not like when I got into organized religion. I think a lot of people abuse it, I think a lot of people use it, I think a lot of people make it what they want. And me, my faith and my relationship with God is very personal. And it's not anybody's damn business how we talk.
I don't believe in organized religion - I dealt with them hand in hand, and a whole bunch of Catholic priests tried to molest me. Telling me I was gay and I should go home with them and stuff.
The first proper mystery novel that I read was 'Murder On the Orient Express' with a gaunt David Niven and a cherubic Peter Ustinov on the cover. 'Orient Express,' you'll recall, is the one where everyone did it, which delighted me no end, and I was immediately hooked.
When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.
