But if people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors.
Not a lot of people know me outside of athletics and believe it or not I am actually quite shy. The exhilaration of a win or tears after falling are the extremes. It takes me a while to get to know someone, but once I do I am very loyal to my old friends.
I wrote two poems about the '81 uprisings: 'Di Great Insohreckshan' and 'Mekin Histri.' I wrote those two poems from the perspective of those who had taken part in the Brixton riots. The tone of the poem is celebratory because I wanted to capture the mood of exhilaration felt by black people at the time.
People don't exist in a vacuum. They're a result of who raised them and who they love and who frustrates them.
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
The cinema should be human and be part of people's lives; it should focus on ordinary existences in sometimes extraordinary situations and places. That is what really motivates me.
The whole idea of the suburbs was to create these family-friendly places where people could flock and have more control over their existences, and keep things very controlled and placid and keep outside forces at bay.
Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n' roll.
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.
I really don't have much respect for the people who live their lives motivated by an exit strategy existing, being performed. There was no option that we were trained in that says, 'If it gets too hard, get up and leave.'
If you can't define a winning exit strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we're wasting our money, and we're wasting our strategic resources.
Time is not on Gaddafi's side. People ask about the exit strategy. It's Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.
You know that Moses was spinning like crazy in Exodus XIV through XVII when the Jewish people wanted to go back and become a place again because tramping through the desert was a bit too hard.
We have to convince our youth that the nation does not need the white-collared class only. We have to find work for the rural young people in the village itself and stop the exodus to the cities.
I'd heard about rehab, where you send people with drug problems, but I soon learned that there's no standard definition of it; instead it's a generic word for a wide variety of treatments, including some that are outrageous. Past-life therapy? Exorcism?
In school I was always being cast as the clown. And then I did 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose,' and once people hear you scream, they can't un-hear it. But I don't mean to say that I've been typecast, either.
I think the film you hear about the most is 'The Exorcist.' When people come up to me and say, 'Oh, you scared me!' I was the good guy in that film!
One of the reasons I don't have kids is because I think people would have been very unfair to them. Think of it. You're still asking me questions about The Exorcist.
What has always made the Clintons great politicians and better people is their unyielding commitment to expanding the middle class for everyone.
Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.
