I think when you get into your 30s, you start to realize all of the patterns you have in your life and all of the stuff that you're avoiding. It's a terribly unsung period in people's lives. I can't think about many artists who have sung about it, because it's so not sexy.
I've always had this image of this strong, sprightly person who is undaunted by anything; on the contrary, I was one of the shyest, most unsure people you ever met in your life. But I have one very specific quality: I'm plucky. I really am. I would say that's a perfect description of my personality.
Since babyhood, I've always evolved from one thing to another. My mother gave me ballet lessons at 6 as part of her enthusiasm for the arts and for life. We went to museums, to the theater. While her own talent was untapped, she worked for church causes.
I want to settle down and start an academy in a rural area, because I feel that's where most champions come from. If you have everything in life, why would you wake up at 3:30 A.M. to train? I feel there's a lot of talent that goes untapped there, especially in women sports.
People leave when life becomes untenable where they are.
Why do I leave the March for Life every year happier than when I came? Hope and gratefulness are the reasons. Gratefulness for the life we have and the life we've given and hope for the future, to live in a world where abortion becomes unthinkable.
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.
I'm a brown-skinned Indian immigrant, low-caste untouchable - I don't know how many labels you want to put on me - who's fought all his life.
These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths.
Don't go to the grave with life unused.
Thinking back, the majority of the conflicts I've had in my life have been a result of offering up my two unwelcome cents, crossing that line between constructive truth-telling and preaching.
Being upbeat is the key to life.
Music is life. Music defines peoples' experience on this planet. Name one time in your life that wasn't punctuated by the music you listened to at the time. When people are down, they listen to music that commiserates that emotion. When people are amped up, they listen to more upbeat, loud songs.
Even though many couples are choosing to marry later in life, our laws haven't been updated to address dating partner abuse.
I'd like to keep updating myself. That's the only way to make life interesting. And because I am a performer, I like to do it deliberately and with purpose.
We suddenly saw how people reacted in the event of massive social upheaval, and the way that the little problems in your life don't go away. You don't stop being frightened of spiders just because the world's blown up.
I had started writing as a poet in a closed, post-Revival, claustrophobic world, where the shadows of the national upheaval and the intense effort - the intense self-conscious effort - to make a literary movement were still evident. Now we lived a life as writers that was more cosmopolitan, more open, that had more travel and exchange.
The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence, and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all members of Congress.
Today, more than ever, citizens demand with good reason that moral and ethical principles be upheld and that exemplariness preside over our public life. And the king, as the head of state, must not only be an example but also a servant to that just and legitimate demand of the citizens.
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
