You gotta go with your gut. It will never steer you wrong.
I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.
I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.
I never had that wicked stepmother or evil stepfather thing at all. I'm very close to both step-parents and I consider them to be my parents, too.
Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.
I never got a stereo system until about 1969. It was only when I went to America in '68 and listened to FM radio; I really thought, 'Wow, there's something in this.'
I have never been the stereotypical figure skater.
I do not take steroids. I never have. It's sad to me that people want to point fingers. I don't do that. That's not me. I wouldn't feel like a human being.
In regards to steroids, I think we're all to blame, all of baseball. I never realized how far-reaching this problem has been.
I'm sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids.
You know what I did? I turned down an offer to do 'Enemy of the People' with Steve McQueen. It doesn't matter that the film was never really released. A movie like that, successful or not, adds to your credits. It leads to other roles.
An offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold in Montreal in 1976. Stevenson was at his peak. The world had never seen a heavyweight with the tools Stevenson brought into the ring.
I've never chosen the easy route to world titles or the easy route in fights, and I came up short against Stevenson.
I stick to my guns - that's what keeps me going as an artist. Stevie Wonder never changed from what he wanted to do, and each new album that came along was dope.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
I love hooks, but getting radio airplay has never been a concern to me while I'm writing. That would be a very stifling and imprisoning way of writing music.
I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.
Just keep stirring the pot, you never know what will come up.
