Richard Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House.

Gore Vidal, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, all these guys talk about how the United States became a national security state after World War II. I agree with that thesis. Essentially there's this bipartisan foreign policy elite who've been calling the shots for the last few decades and they're clearly still in control regardless of how clownish or absurd or stupid they demonstrate themselves to be. There's no shaking their orthodoxy.

I could never stand big-mouthed types. I had problems with that at high school. I’ve still got the scars on my fists from the teeth of the guys I hit so that they’d finally shut up. I came from England to Canada, of course, and was often ridiculed because I had a strange accent. I was expelled from school and it was a long time before I could control myself. But the impulse remained: a punch in the mouth to get some peace and quiet.

The vampire or the bad guy, that's what people do remember. Lars von Trier, like Guy Maddin, their films are made for a group of exclusive people who like special films. And they are special films, they are art films. And I started with commercial films at the beginning, and later on, because you know, when you are an actor, you have the same cliché like everybody else, you want to be in big films, you want to be known and all that.

Even now if I see someone working out, in great shape, like a 40-year-old guy with his shirt off jogging I always think, "Look at that idiot." That's why everyone in my movie is kind of goofy because I'm a champion of the goofball. What sucks is I have to work out now not to die. I was always happy not working out because I never wanted to be someone who worked out to look good, but now I have to try to not die, which is such a drag.

The CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, married one of the Enron secretaries this week. It's amazing how romantic these Enron guys can be when they realize that wives can't be forced to testify against their husbands. Skilling said today she was the best secretary Enron had ever had. She could shred 950 words a minute. ... I guess they are on their honeymoon right now. That's going pretty well. Hey, he's used to screwing Enron employees.

When you think of all the things that have happened, since that problem with computers in 2000 and everybody was afraid and they were buying water, imagine what Millennium would do with all the things that are going on in the world right now. It has the capacity to be a movie. But, anyway, I loved doing it. It changed my life because the guy that I was playing was so much more educated and smarter than I was, so I had to live up to it.

I went in right up front and said, This can't be about some guy in bandages. I didn't even want to do a horror movie. I took the concept and made a romantic adventure film. I like action heroes who don't take themselves too seriously. I wanted to make everyone take the mummy seriously, but it couldn't just be a guy in bandages. But the main thing was to build in surprises. That's one of the great things you can do with special effects.

I have so much love to give. That's why, when I was single, I talked about being married and wanting to have children so much. I have so much love that's been poured into me, by my family, my friends, strangers! Once I put myself on a national platform to be an actress and singer, so much love gets poured into me that I just exude all of that love! So, really, it's just a residual effect of what you guys are giving me. I'm overflowing!

If Cameron kidnaps you, kills you, then buries your lifeless body in a shallow grave in the desert where your remains lay decomposing for several decades until they're accidentally discovered by some guy on a journey to awaken his spirit at the Salinas Pueblo Missions, can I have your iMac?" I gaped at her. "You've really thought this out. "I love your iMac." "I love my iMac too, and you're not getting her." "But you'll be decomposing.

There are loads of players I could name who are 16-16 looked like world beaters but then at 21-22 they are subs in non-league. There comes a time in your career when the pennies got to drop, where you've got to understand decisionmaking at the right, poignant moments in the game. When to pass, when to dribble, when to shoot. Game-changing moments, can you be the guy that sits there and takes the responsibility. And the great players do.

I was in Antwerp - which, I had about 20 shows left at that point - and a guy said, "That's Dave Attell's." Also, Antwerp was my smallest audience, so the guy was right there. I was like, "What?" He said, "Dave Attell does a bit about, 'Why are there luggage stores in the airport?'" I had never seen that, and I would never ever, ever, ever - please believe me - I would never lift material from somebody ever, and certainly not knowingly.

I think if I lived in New York I would be really stressed out going out to a club and seeing a good DJ who's doing something on a similar level. I'm pretty critical of myself when it comes to the music. Maybe they're not doing as many samples or the samples aren't put together as specifically but it would stress me out to feel like I needed to be one upping someone. In Pittsburgh, I'm in my own world - I know I'm the guy doing this here.

I had PubLIZity, I had Oh, Hello, I had Bobby and Farley - all of these sketches that were really these duo sketches, but the relationship between them is really what catapulted them forward. A lot of that, I think, came from Wayne and Garth, these two similar guys - they're Midwestern metal guys - but in the end, they're quite different because there's an alpha and a beta. And I think that model became very present for me on Kroll Show.

There are reviews that are clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson's famous Life of Savage, he's clearly wrong about the value of Savage. But it's one of the great works in English literature. You can learn more about the artistic expression and what the poet does and how to write about art from that than any number of guys who are terrible writers, who have no original ideas, but who say yes, "Hamlet" is a wonderful play. It's a meaningless statement.

When I used to be a contract player in 1954 at Universal, I wasn't getting good roles. I was getting one-liners, and then I'd be gone. But I'd hang around; I'd watch guys. And when I had days off, which was most days, I'd go down and watch other sets while they were shooting. Watch Joan Crawford or whomever. Just watch how they worked and how the director handled them. I didn't know anything about making movies, and there's a lot to learn.

You guys are always going off about how much money you have. Do you realize what's going on in this world right now?' All these black rappers? African rappers? Talking about how much money they have. Do you realize what's going on in Africa right now? It's just like, you guys are disgusting. Talking about billions and billions of dollars you have. And spending it frivolously, when you know, the Motherland is suffering beyond belief right now.

I have a feeling a lot of artists' work got lost [because of AIDS]. Howard was fortunate because his family and friends supported him, but a chilling thing I remember was these guys at St. Vincent's [Hospital] who would call out for someone to listen to them, just for a moment. They were dying alone. Who knows what happened to their work? It's been a process to follow the thread to find out everything Howard did. It's getting over that shock.

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

When you're the guy behind the camera, you're aware of the reasons for the compromises or the changes that get made. As an actor, you go and do your thing, and someone else down the line then does all the math and goes, "We can't include that thing where he's pretending to be dumb and needling those people, because it takes a minute and a half, and it ruins the next scene. It doesn't make sense." If you're directing, you're the one doing that.

If I had a worldview, and I don't know if I do, but if I did, it's one that's intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that's the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole, it's about human connections.

Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may—until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can. Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good. Or until I'm hauled before somebody that can make me talk.

"Smooth Sailing" and "Hall of Fame" are my top two nicknames. "Cool Guy." "Jolly Jon." "Fun Jon." There's a lot of derivatives of Jon. "Cool Jon." Some people took "Smooth Sailing" and "Fun Jon" and made "Smooth Jon." That's a good one. It's just starting to catch on with the general public. Just every now and then, "Hey! Smooth Jon!" Or "You're Smooth Jon, right?!" People aren't quite sure. I'm like, "Yeah." "Okay, cool, that's what I thought!"

I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me. I don't feel it in myself but from an outsider's point of view, I can see they must be thinking, "Who the hell does this guy think he is?" But recently I've been thinking, okay, a white guy can't sing soul, but would a black person be made exempt from singing opera because it's not a tradition that belongs to them? It's the same kind of argument.

My daughter loved All About Steve movie, because she's 6 feet tall and she's different. And I got a lot of great e-mails from people who are different. I'm a gay icon. I'll just say it. That's what they say to me, so I'll accept it. I got so many e-mails saying that it meant so much to those people. My daughter said, "They didn't like it just because she didn't get the guy! If they had lived happily ever after, people would have liked that movie."

Too much horsing around with unrealistic stances and classic forms and rituals is just too artificial and mechanical, and doesn't really prepare the student for actual combat. A guy could get clobbered while getting into this classical mess. Classical methods like these, which I consider a form of paralysis, only solidify and constrain what was once fluid. Their practitioners are merely blindly rehearsing routines and stunts that will lead nowhere.

What, are you totally psycho?" I shouted. "Maybe I am!" he screamed back at me. "Maybe that's just what I am. Maybe I'm that quiet guy who suddenly goes nuts and then you find half the neighborhood in his freezer." I gotta admit, that one stumped me for a second - but only for a second. "Which half?" I asked. "Huh?" "Which half of the neighborhood? Could you make it the people on the other side of Avenue T, because I never really liked them anyway.

I'm an optimistic guy.It's just as much the case that people will come to me and ask my opinion about how to properly include the Muslim community, as it is that people will come with some hateful stuff too. When people come to me about my religion, it's not always a thing of "we don't want people like you here," which happens sometimes. But mostly it's people who would like to know more. I get a chance to help people understand the religion better.

Years ago when I started doing TV and making appearances in big arenas, the place would put security guys up there and I said, "Please don't do that. It's very distracting to see ten cops in front of the stage. Everybody's looking at the officers instead of me. I don't want that." I also found that people will dare to break a barricade. If they have a barricade, somebody will always try to jump over it. I've found that the more open I am, the better.

The most important quote about poetry and politics that I know is from a different situationist, Guy Debord. He was locked in a debate with the French Surrealists, many of whom by the 40s and 50s were part of the French communist party apparatus. Many Surrealists eventually argued for instrumentalizing art for political ends. Debord countered, "I don't want to put poetry in the service of revolution. I want to put revolution in the service of poetry".

Certainly, from where I stand, I'm not a specialist in wildly different walks and voices. But I find as much variation and nuance as what satisfies me in what I do. So, I don't find this particularly different. He has his own peculiarities. You're probably talking about a cluster of Englishmen in suits but I've done quite a big cluster of guys not in suits as well, which I've occupied myself with. So, I don't find that this is the one that stands out.

The American people are not expecting miracles. I think if you talk to the average person right now that they would say, 'Well, look, you know well, we're having a tough time right now. We've had tough times before.' 'And you know, we don't expect a new president can snap his fingers and suddenly everything is gonna be okay. But what we do expect is that the guy is gonna be straight with us. We do expect that he's gonna be working really hard for us.'

Once I do something, I need to be obsessed - or maybe I don't need to be obsessed, but I get obsessed because that's just the way my brain works - but I need to pay a lot of attention to detail. Because everything counts to me once I do something, even if it's a movie that nobody cares about. That's why I need to choose very well what I want to do. But in real life, when I watch TV or whatever, I guess I'm not that obsessive guy, and I'm pretty boring.

I am the best wrestler in the world. I've been the best ever since day one when I walked into this company, and I've been vilified and hated since that day because Paul Heyman saw something in me that nobody else wanted to admit. That's right, I'm a Paul Heyman guy. You know who else was a Paul Heyman guy? Brock Lesnar, and he split just like I'm splitting, but the biggest difference between me and Brock is I'm going to leave with the WWE Championship.

That's what we were interested in: how power and money ran itself, much more so than 'drugs are bad, drugs are good.' That seems to me a simple moral equation and one you don't have to spend 60 hours of television examining. And I think the same thing is true with how we approached pornography or prostitution. Prostitution's been around since the Bible, and pornography's been around since about 15 minutes after the French guy invented the first camera.

Everything that happens to me gets put into a song. For some reason, I'm really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs. There, I don't hold back: names, dates, times, expressions on people's faces, exactly where we were and how it felt, what I wish I would have said to them in the moment. So I'm not only excited about sharing the songs with fans; I'm also pretty interested to hear the response from the guys I've written about on the record.

What a shock that a guy who makes $2 million a week behaves exactly like I would with $2 million a week. As far as I’m concerned, if you make $2 million a week and you don’t have a hooker in your hotel room, you’re creepy and I don’t trust you. And I don’t do drugs at all, so for me it would just be more prostitutes. That’s how they would find me. I would be dead on the floor, flattened by a pile of prostitutes. I’d look like a cat in a hoarders’ house.

I have to get back there." I said to Adrian. "Into that door." He arched an eyebrow. "What, like sneaking in? How very black ops of you. And oh, you know— dangerous and foolish." "I know." I said, surprised at how calm I sounded as I admitted that. "But I have to know something, and this may be my only chance." "Then I'll go with you in case that guy comes back," he said with a sigh. "Never let it be said Adrian Ivashkov doesn't help damsels in distress.

The Los Angeles Times reported that sixty-three percent of American families are now considered dysfunctional. Good. 'Cause that means when Armageddon really happens, thirty-seven percent of this population is going to lose their minds. Oh my God, the world is over! Us sixty-three percent? We're going to go, Hey... there's no one watching the Lexus dealership! We're going to the Apocalypse with leather and a CD changer! You guys have been great. Thank you.

You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea." "Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required." "I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners." Jace flipped a page. "Very funny, Fray.

I don't know that person anymore, that guy in '86, '87. I don't know that guy no more. I don't have no affinity for that guy no more. I have no affinity for the guy who said, 'I am the greatest fighter God produced.' I have no affinity for the guy who said he would try to push his [opponent's] nose bone up into his brain. I just don't know that guy. I don't know who he is. I don't know where he came from. I don't have no kind of connection with him no more.

We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.

I was amazed to go Oscar and win it. It was fantastic getting up on the stage there and looking down. I thought, "That guy looks like Steve Martin, and that guy's like Arnold Schwarzenegger." But it was Steve Martin, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they have this terrible kind of conveyor belt backstage - literally - where they take you to this big hangar where the world's press are gathered, and they make you stand on a stage, and they introduce you.

There were a lot of things in it that were important at the time to me. Cutter's Way movie was very relevant. And I wanted Cutter to succeed as a vet, as a guy coming back from 'Nam, because there were so many guys like that. And there were so many other movies at the time, like Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, and The Deer Hunter, that it was really important that the movie be believable, that I come across a pissed-off vet who'd been there and comes home angry.

I'm definitely not a guy that comes in the dressing room saying, "Hey, everybody, what a wonderful life." I'm usually brooding about something I think is wrong. I care so much about getting the music right, and if I think someone's slacking I get very upset about that. I just can't go on stage and say, "Another day, another dollar," which I've heard a few people say: I can't go along with that at all. It's got to be as good as you can do - to my own detriment.

I'm a big fan of the 70's action films. Where there is a lot of character and a lot of great action, but the action is kind of cemented with a great back-story with characters. And I thought, this kind of reminded me of the movies that, early on when I was telling Dwayne (Johnson) and the guys, the producer... my whole thing is if you look at a movie like The Driver by Walter Hill, it's a film where there's no names. They are just named, "the driver", "the cop".

At the beginning of the Larry Sanders show, you know, we were grateful to get guests. At the end, it was as if we actually were The Tonight Show. People would come on, and it had the same sort of imprimatur as if we were on the air. I've been on a lot of talk shows during that time and since then, and people would come up in the dressing room or in the corridors and say, "You guys got it exactly right." Or they would say, "We have Larry Sanders moments every day."

I mean, these are really dedicated people [in Lovecraft Society] when it comes to [h.P.] Lovecraft. But in the top floor of the John Hay Library, you have all of Lovecraft's archives. And messing around in there, I noticed, I said, what are these paintings? And the librarian told me, "Well, those are Pickman's paintings." I said, "I thought this was like something he made up, like The Necronomicon, that kind of stuff." And he said no, that the guy actually existed.

When I studied computer science at Duke University in the first half of the 1980s, I had professors who treated women differently than men. I kind of got used to it. At Microsoft, I had to use my elbows and make sure I spoke up at the table, but it was an incredibly meritocratic place. Outside, in the industry, I would feel the sexism. I'd walk into a room and until I proved my worth, everyone would assume that the guy presenting with me had credibility and I didn't.

I see these other actors come up with this tough-guy personas and now when they're on talk shows they're all... But that's not really the way they are. I probably could have used a little bit of that. At one point I was labeled "The King Of Dumb White Guys." I was offended by that when I was younger, but I understand what that's from, so I was like, "Only a genius can play a fool." But I'm very aware of that, and I'll play into it and use it however I need to use it.

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