My politics are wildly different from hers, but someone who has been good for women in politics, stamped her authority on European and world affairs, is Angela Merkel.
Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
It can't hurt to go to the people you love, whose blood type courses through your veins and whose DNA, from a certain angle, contains many of the same markings as yours. You don't have to take their advice, but let them share their version of solutions to life's difficulties. Good or bad - it could be interesting.
You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.
I've been that celebrity on the red carpet, and I appreciate that something hasn't got to just look good from the front, from the back, it's got to look good at all angles.
I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo-Saxons such tremendous power that Europe will become a bloc under Anglo-Saxon domination. If that is the case, it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether Stalin will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.
You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won't receive the good things God has in store.
The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.
I remember when first, Stripes, and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of, even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.
I've had dogs all my life. I'm a huge animal lover, especially dogs, so that's one of the hardest things about being away all the time. I really miss them, but my mum does a really good job looking after then when I'm gone.
There are a lot of great animal rights organizations who save dogs and save cats, but the Humane Society is actually really good at working with Congress and getting legislation actually passed.
A good way to take a baby step into the world of animal rights is to make a list of small things you can do to help your issue and work your way up to the big things. Make a promise to do one thing on your list each month.
In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.
Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.
To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures.
Disney was not a good animator, he didn't draw well at all, but he was always a great idea man, and a good writer.
Mr. Miyazaki's specialty is taking a primal wish of kids, transporting them to a fantasyland, and then marooning them there. No one else conjures the phantasmagoric and shifting morality of dreams - that fascinating and frightening aspect of having something that seems to represent good become evil - in the way this master Japanese animator does.
