If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.
For me, art is always a kind of theater. When I started the spot paintings, I made them as an endless series. But I was never serious about it being an endless series. It was just an implied endless series. The theater means you just have to make it look good for that moment in the spotlight.
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words do more damage than most people can imagine. Especially name-calling. 'You're dangerous!' 'Deceived.' 'A false prophet.' 'A compromiser!' Charges like these by young-earth leaders, both spoken and implied, are intended to discredit, maim, and crush old-earth advocates, including me.
I've been intrigued by 'Le Monde' ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news.
I remember the first time I heard a co-worker refer to himself as a foodie. It immediately irritated me. Was he implying that he appreciated food more than other people? That his love of eating was somehow more evolved than mine? Don't all people love the thing we can't live without?
I was obliged to stand there, holding the leash of this creature for their welcoming publicity shots, implying that this was some kind of image the decided to have of me.
Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves.
I knew that extremism in Luton was a really important issue to try and cover, even though it could be very awkward for me at times!
My mother never made me do anything for my brothers, like serve them. I think that's an important lesson, especially for the Latino culture, because the women are expected to be the ones that serve and cook and whatever. Not in our family. Everybody was equal.
I had the good fortune to be able to take a course with Margaret Mead. I had a fabulous art course, where it was explained to me that nothing exists in a vacuum, that everything is a result of the period in which it's done - the economics, the sociology, the politics, all sewn together. That was a very important lesson.
The most important lesson my dad taught me was how to manage fear. Early on, he taught me that in a time of emergency, you've got to become deliberately calm.
That's an important lesson for me, to not qualify my experience against somebody else's. My experience is the experience that I wanted to have, and have created for myself, but it doesn't make me any more deserving than anybody else - or less.
The most important message is to let me just focus on making the most beautiful normcore clothes, but as luxurious as possible.
The message of transformation and how we all can live from our heart, not just from our head, was a very important message for me to learn in my own life.
And it sends an important message to me, because I am sick to death to hear my opponent saying Republicans don't trust me. They do trust me, in landslide proportions, and they're proving it tonight. We're going to bury that for good.
And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most important moments in modern American political life.
There's a sound with Motley Crue, and it comes with Vince's voice, which is such an important part of the show, and Mick's guitar. And the way Tommy and me play together is an important part of it.
Growing up, I felt like it was very dangerous to mess up in any way, both in front of men and in front of other girls. It was like you couldn't make mistakes. So having a female friend who's like, 'Get over yourself. You're driving me crazy!' - that's been one of my most important parts of becoming an adult.
I really do think artists are the most important people on the planet, and if what I do is a utility and helps them, then that makes me happy. I want to be helpful.
Rather than bringing me closer to others, the time that I spend online isolates me from the most important people in my life, my family, my friends, my neighbourhood, my community.
