My aspiration isn't to be famous; it's to design clothes. If that gets me attention at the end of the day, cool.
I aspire to be that, to be a voice of reason one day.
Laziness isn't merely a physical phenomenon,about being a couch potato,stuffing your face with fries and watching cricket all day. It's a mental thing, too, and that's the part I have never aspired for.
The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need: it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden. As kids, we didn't complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could.
During the course of any normal day, I usually pay more attention to assembling a grocery list than I do to reading movie reviews, although there are a more than a few film critics who bring huge insight to their work.
A big part of the Motown formula was, they took music and turned it into this sort of automotive assembly line. They were cranking out 10 songs a day in that studio, or more.
I always showed myself in the face of day, asserting the liberty and independence of my country, while some others, like owls, courted concealment and were too much afraid of losing their roosts to leave them for such a cause.
Ironically, while many of us spend hours every day using small mobile devices to increase our productivity and efficiency, interacting with these objects, even for short periods of time, might do just the opposite, reducing our assertiveness and undermining our productivity.
If I'm preparing for something and I've got a huge day the next day, I have to get into character the night before to assess the scene. I can't assess a scene unless I'm in character, if that makes sense.
If you have the ability to convince somebody of something that you don't necessarily think is the case, it's a valuable asset. Not that I'm, like, a pathological liar, but we spend most of the day not fully being honest, you know?
I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years.
Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.
As an intern for Vice President Walter Mondale, I arrived the first day ready to write policy memos and change the world... but my assignment was doing an inventory of the furniture.
When I was in lower school, I graduated from fourth grade, and the principal gave us a summer assignment to take a 30-minute reflection period every day. And, of course, there were no cell phones at the time. She said to just think. And that's lost. It doesn't exist anymore. Just imagine being on a couch and just thinking.
I don't overeat. I only eat one meal a day... but my body has been one of those that has almost perfect assimilation, so everything I eat is assimilated, not lost.
I will never forget the bright September day, standing at my desk in the White House, when my young assistant said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center - and then a second one - and a third, the Pentagon.
When you're a father in a marriage, you sort of become the mother's assistant. And you sort of get a list from her every day and you run down the list and it feels very much like a chore.
I don't live lavishly, so it's not like I have 20 assistants and travel privately and shop every day.
At the end of the day, especially in retail, you've got humans serving humans. And really, the more engaged and happier the associates are, the happier our guests are. It's not complicated.
I'd rather invest in an entrepreneur who has failed before than one who assumes success from day one.
