I'm very wary of large groups of people getting together and trying to believe the same thing. It never seems to end well, whether it's political or religious or whatever.
Illegitimacy is important for the socialisation of little girls and especially little boys. If you have large numbers of young men growing up who never see an adult male doing the ordinary things men do, then you get chaos. This is not a moral statement, it's an empirical statement.
Newspapers are not free and they never have been. They can appear to be so, but someone, somewhere is covering the costs whether that is through advertising, a patron's largesse or a license fee. Advertising is no longer subsidising the industry and so the cost must fall somewhere - why not on the people who use it?
I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
I wrote my first screenplay on a lark, because it was a storytelling format that felt like a familiar shorthand - we all watch movies, don't we? But even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was entirely unconnected with the movie industry, and I never truly believed that it would one day be my fate.
I did Lassie for six years and I never had anybody come up to me and say, 'It made me want to be a farmer.'
Playing for 14 years definitely took its toll mentally. I decided when I was playing my last season that when I retired from football I would never go back into it, and I've never regretted that decision.
War is never a lasting solution for any problem.
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
Better never than late.
I was raised in Hawaii in what I call a 'faith-inclusive' family. I never felt I had to choose loyalty to the New Testament over the Bhagavad Gita. It really wasn't until my late teens that I became aware of the ugly concept of sectarianism.
I've never really socialized; I've always been anti-social and preferred to be at home. I was never, even my late teens and early twenties, into clubs and parties and stuff like that.
I had never been attracted to younger guys. I had, from my late teens, always liked men who were older than me.
I never wanted to be in the late-night talk show wars, and I think somehow with 'Totally Biased,' I got caught up in all that. Suddenly, there are articles about how we finally have a black voice in late-night.
I never thought I would get such a perfect role in 'Modern Family.' A lot of TV shows now are looking for more Latin women.
I was a very good student. But I didn't have the latitude to study more. I was never allowed to do anything cross-disciplinary. Why can't an engineering student learn physics?
I never had a plan. I have to say, I'm very shocked when people start a company and say, 'In five years I want to launch a perfume, or in 10 years I want to have this.' How can you know?
Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.
I like to be able to present myself in two or three different ways because I've never really wanted to rest on my laurels and be something that people expected.
I'm always hungry for the next thing. I'm never resting on my laurels.
