Orwell has always been a huge influence on me.
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.
There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
Everybody who has ever been snubbed, you know that is very humiliating.
Puerto Rico, within the span of two weeks, received two Category 4-5 hurricanes. That has never happened anywhere. The devastation has been enormous.
In my home State of Louisiana, several institutions of higher education have been impacted by both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, literally dozens across the entire State.
In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, our nation has been put under considerable fiscal pressure.
As a writer, I've always been somebody who's been productive and hustled hard.
I've always been a hustler.
Minorities have been hustling backwards from check to check.
I'd been brought up on... American TV: 'Lou Grant,' 'Starsky & Hutch;' 'Gilligan's Island.'
If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.
It's not a master plan to do every remake and every recreation of icons. It's just what I've been hired to do.
The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.
I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.
Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.
I've been imagining spikes in my head since I was 13 years old.
No doubt these rocky islands have suggested the idea worked out in gardens, and they have been well imitated.
Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator.
