Human nature being what it is, if you told me you were going to give me one dollar with no strings attached, I probably wouldn't question the gift too much. But if you told me you wanted to give me one hundred dollars with no obligation, I'd have to think about it for a minute before accepting.
It's really cool to know that there are so many people out there that are attached to me or projects that I've done to really feel that it's a personal relationship.
I started moving towards Serbia when I felt my country, Yugoslavia, was being taken away from me. My feeling of nationality was not as strong as those around me who were attaching themselves to these absurd new entities.
In general, I avoided giving lectures or attaching myself while abroad to a university. To learn what I wanted to know, I went instead to rural communities and onto actual farms. Talk with university people, government officials and U.S. personnel stationed in the country was much less rewarding for me.
The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away.
Young people have this almost romantic attachment to civil rights, liberties, emancipating people from oppression, etc. The idea that such oppression exists in this country offends me, but it's able to be pushed and sold because education in this country is so woefully incompetent and inept.
My brands are an extension of me. They're close to me. It's not like running GM, where there's no emotional attachment.
There's nothing I have to hide or defend. I'm gonna live my life. And there are times when people wanna try to attack me, and I don't know why, but they will. And that's okay.
The Obama representatives like Robert Gibbs attack people viciously, but people like me will not be silent and will answer them back.
The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.
And by the way I don't object if people want to attack me, that's their right. All I'm suggesting that it's not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking.
I had been so focused on what to discard, on attacking the unwanted obstacles around me, that I had forgotten to cherish the things that I loved, the things I wanted to keep.
I'm not thick-skinned at all, and of course I'm hurt by people attacking me as a person.
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil.
Great dad. Yeah, he would ask me for money on birthdays and, you know, inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like, 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.
I think most people think of ballerinas as kind of either as a fairytale, far-away thing that's really not attainable, something they can't grasp, or they think of them as European or Russian and kind of their nose up in the air. So, it's cool for me to, like, sit with them and for them to really see themselves as me.
I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.
The three-peat has never been attempted, ever, and for me, I think it will add to my legendary status. I want to become one of the greatest athletes ever to have competed in any sport, so for me, that's what it means.
Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.
