When we shot the pilot for 'Voyager,' Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark on 'Deep Space Nine,' was very gracious and outgoing about preparing us for these personal appearances. Still, nothing really can prepare you for the first time when you walk out on stage and 2,000 people in a room stand up and applaud simply because you're there.
Here's the thing: I did one episode of Deep Space Nine, and I loved everybody that I worked with. People couldn't have been kinder... But I had a really, really difficult time with the prosthetics.
People quote lines to me all the time. I'm always surprised - everybody has a favorite movie, and they're always different. I'm always shocked. People stop me on the street and throw lines at me from 'Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight' and 'Deep Space Nine.' 'Shawshank' happens a lot because they play it so much on TV.
There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.
There's a deeper level of healing that needs to happen for the world in general. There's a mass of people who are broken.
When people pay to see you live, they connect with you on a much deeper level than people who just buy your records.
Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level.
Especially in the West, people want to understand Asia on a deeper level because it's become the engine of the world economy, like it or not.
The book, '12 Rules For Life,' is a very serious book. There's elements of humor in it, but I'm trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it's necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there's hell to pay if you don't do that.
To be part of something that's so important to other people, it's strange and it's unmooring, and it's deeply beautiful, and it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
When I was growing up, and other people I knew were getting into trouble, I was somewhere in a deer stand or going to bed early so I could be up before dawn to hunt turkeys. My love of the outdoors kept me solid.
More people need to understand the games secular liberals play. Here's one rule-of-thumb: No matter how bad a story sounds - particularly if it sounds bad - recognize the pattern of defamation.
As a lawyer who has dealt in defamation, I know that someone's reputation has to be lowered in the eyes of right-thinking people to sue.
The people that were invested in me staying the same way after a decade will most likely by default have to be disappointed.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people think African-American female artists are monolithically R&B this-or-that, don't have to do anything by default.
The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.
As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.
The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism - mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn't deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.
We have fought this fight as long, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
