Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

I wanted to design a line based on Hollywood's Golden Era. I talked with Stephen Burrows and with Willi Smith and with one or two other people, but it just seems like such a hard field to break into. I need someone like Calvin Klein's manager to get behind me!

My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.

I am flawed, but at least I can admit it, and at least Kenny Omega, Tyson Smith, is exposed to every single one of you, every single night I perform in the ring. And the relationships that I have in my life with the fans, they're all with me. We are all family.

A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me.

I was a highlight coordinator. My job was to go in and watch games, watch and type. Basically every time the camera frame changed, I had to log it as something: 'Emmitt Smith rushed for 4 yards... Close-up of Jimmy Johnson on the sidelines... 37-yard field goal.'

Life is full of joys and sorrows, much of it our own making. Sadly, the West has voted time and time again for bigger government, more inflation, higher taxes and excessive regulation - all policies that have kept us from Adam Smith's vision of an opulent society.

'M Train' will take you in and out of dreamscapes and reality and remembrances with prose so spare and matter-of-fact that it delivers a much bigger emotional punch. Patti Smith doesn't need to embellish; she just tells her stories... and her stories are incredible.

My parents, Mary Agnes Smith and Rowland Smith, both had to work since their early teens, she in the holiday boarding house of her mother and he in his father's market garden in Marton Moss, a village on the south side of Blackpool, just north of Saint Anne's-on-Sea.

Jeff Smith was the Julia Child of my generation. When his television show, 'The Frugal Gourmet,' made its debut on PBS in the 1980s, it conveyed such genuine enthusiasm for cooking that I was moved for the first time to slap down cold cash for a collection of recipes.

I started composing when I was around 13, and back then, people used to say that I needed to be a composer or a performer, but I can't be good at both of them. I could never understand why anyone would say that. Jellyroll did both, Bessie Smith did both, and so did I.

I really love Paul Smith. And Chrome Hearts. They make the most beautiful, high-end leather and outerwear and jewelry you've ever seen. But I'm not a big fan of shopping. I certainly am a fan of clothes and especially people that put time into the construction of them.

Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth.

God has been my number one inspiration. I also look up to Will Smith and Jamie Fox who are also personal friends of mine. They give me great career advice. I would also include Chris Stokes, as a filmmaker and music producer. I've been working with him since I was eight.

The program of A.A., as written by Bill Wilson and Dr. Smith, only has one purpose: to get you sober. That's it. To make you a better person, forget it. That was one of the things he came to understand in those years of trial and error. It has to be about only one thing.

I used to imagine what it would be like to do what Jim Brown was doing. I used to imagine what it would be like to be like a Tony Dorsett. I used to imagine what it would be like to be like a Walter Payton. I was imagining Emmitt Smith doing exactly what they were doing.

When I was in the GB Women's football team at the 2012 Olympics, it was obvious who was in the first XI and who was making up the numbers. Kelly Smith was going to be first-choice striker no matter what, and the other forwards in the squad mentally checked out as a result.

What happened on 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' I was given a big budget and given too many choices, and I made a lot of mistakes and missteps early on until I squandered all that extra money. But then, once my back was up against the wall, I made what I consider a really good movie.

Early economic theory was rooted in the Italian, French, and Spanish traditions, which were subjectivist oriented. Then it shifted onto the terrible path by Smith and Ricardo and the British classical tradition, which is 'objectivist' - values are in inherent in production.

In rare cases, I've had music before I shot the movie. I think that for 'Good Will Hunting' I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand.

Will Smith is my favorite actor, because he has so much variety in his career. He's done all types of roles, played in all types of worlds, and to me, that's the fun of acting. That's why I started doing it when I was eight years old, because you get to be whatever you want.

Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies.

I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it's Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I'm just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it's important to represent the normal.

The biggest thing that I get most excited about is, my family and I would watch television together, and we weren't just passive viewers. Something would happen, and then we would talk about it. When Will Smith was shot on 'Fresh Prince,' that sparked a conversation about safety.

A lot of my friends and guys who I have watched and grew up with and who have been at my house are Hall of Famers, and I just know them as Ozzie Smith, Eddie Murray, Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield... I know these guys like my older brothers and uncles, the guys who took care of me.

My role models came in my imagination, from what I'd heard on the radio or on record... Vera Lynn I loved, but I'd only ever heard her on the radio. Gospel singers, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson. So it was in my head that I visualised the emotion but no way to see how people do it.

I'm on the board of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which is run by Dr. Stacy Smith - she conceived of the inclusion rider. What I love about the inclusion rider is it uses the fact that Hollywood is based on hierarchies, and it knows that these key players have persuasive power.

At 16, I went to Smith College in Massachusetts and that was right after the peak of the civil-rights movement and all the rest. It was an era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings.

We have over an hour of footage with Ken Marino. Same with Kevin Smith. Because you never know, when you let people who are so talented at improv go, what you're going to get. You don't want to strangle them with your own words, because probably what they're going to say is way better.

There's this index that tallies up how much your movies have made, and if they haven't grossed a certain amount, then you're not bankable. I know I'm not Will Smith but, you know, my ranking's pretty low. The only studio picture I've done is 'Zodiac,' and that didn't perform that well.

I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

I'd say that my musical influences are anywhere from pop-rock electronica, new age and classical. But I think that specifically, bands - I love Jem, I love Sigur Ross, I love David Gray, I love Elliot Smith... a lot of different people. But I don't find lyrical inspiration from anybody.

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers.

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'

You pick up loads of baggage with your first record with reaction to it from fans and critics. So I went to Ireland by myself for a couple of weeks with my guitar. I read lots of poetry, I read Patti Smith's autobiography and started words and phrases and then songs started to take shape.

I read '1984' at a precocious age, like 8, and when I did the math, I realized that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, was born the same year I was, 1957. I read that book over and over again with the 1960s as a backdrop: anti-war and anti-bomb protests and this general pervasive sense of doom.

Ali was the African-American who exulted in saying exactly what he was capable of, and the bouncing-boy braggadocio of hip-hop is impossible to imagine without him. So it makes sense that one of his spiritual children, the sunny-dispositioned rapper turned actor Will Smith, would play him.

I guess what Kenny Omega is, even though the image is something that was given to me by New Japan and then tweaked by me, it's just me, Tyson Smith. Yeah, that's me, just a guy that likes to joke around when he doesn't have to be serious. And when he has to be serious, he's really serious!

I really look up to Will Smith. He's internationally known, and people know him from everything. I don't know any kid who hasn't seen and liked Fresh Prince, or you'll like one of his movies or his music. He's perfect, and he's done everything. That's my dream: to be internationally known.

I would like to wish the England squad every success. I would also very much like to extend those wishes to Martin Johnson, Brian Smith, Mike Ford, John Wells, Graham Rowntree and the rest of the England 2011 World Cup management team who have been fantastic and deserve people to know that.

You have to capitalise on any success you have and keep doing what you do as well as you can. But how do you define success? In my book, it's to be playing those parts you saw your idols - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave - playing when they were the age you are now.

You should have seen Willie Wells play shortstop: as good as Ozzie Smith and a better hitter. How I wish people could have seen Ray Dandridge play third base, as good as Brooks Robinson and Craig Nettles and all of those. He was bowlegged; a train might go through there, but not a baseball.

I came into the business where Will Smith was pretty much taking over the world - or defending it, if you will. He was showing success on so many different fronts - television, recording, movies. So that was really my prototype in terms of looking at the business and seeing where you fit in.

On one show before a live audience, I had to look out the door and call for Will Smith to come in. The audience couldn't see him, but there he was with his naked butt staring me in the face. I didn't normally hang out with twenty-something practical jokers, so sometimes he was a little much.

Of course my uncle was a giant, but my dad, in particular, had the house filled with these great Dixieland jazz stars, really the best of them: Henry Red Allen, Willie 'The Lion' Smith, Buster Bailey, Cutty Cutshall, Tyree Glenn, Zutty Singleton. These are all big names in the Dixieland world.

Hockey wasn't invented but discovered. The game, and the large organizing idea behind Stephen Smith's deeply personal 'Puckstruck,' sleeps in ponds and in the crooked limbs of trees overhead; we merely pluck a stick from the sky and skate over the frozen world to find ourselves and each other.

Parents' evenings were a big event in our social calendar and school reports were taken very seriously; 'C' was not a grade my mother recognised. Her favourite shop was WH Smith, where every week there would be a new book or pen or calculator to buy. But most importantly, she was my best friend.

'Outlaw Cook' was a revelation. Folks like Jeff Smith and Marcella Hazan got me interested in cooking, but John Thorne pushed me into the path that I follow to this day. This is the only cookbook I've ever read that understands how men really eat: over the sink, in the dark, greasy to the elbows.

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'

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