All of us who covered the Reagans agreed that President Reagan was personable and charming, but I'm not so certain he was nice. It's hard for me to think of anyone as 'nice' when I hear him say 'The homeless are homeless because they want to be homeless.'
I think social issues are always part of a presidential campaign.
I say I'm the only serious comedian in the presidential race. And I'd like to take this opportunity to ask both Romney and Obama to debate me. Because I think that both of those guys - I think that the American people are being given a false choice, because the choice between the lesser of two evils is a false choice.
I think that anybody who is going to be the standard-bearer, the spokesman for the progressive movement, in the context of a presidential race, has got to learn to master the language and really get their finger on the pulse of how people are feeling. I think that's really important.
I am now a member of the private sector. I'm happy. I've got a little foundation. You never say never, but I may have had my last race and that was the Presidential race. I think that you only get one shot.
There are a lot of smart honest, progressive people who I think can be good presidents.
In my first press conference I said, ‘I'm here to win.' If you don't think that way, or any player thinks that way, why are you playing the game?
Now personally, I think the president should golf every day and never have a press conference. I want the leader of the free world to be as stress-free as possible. And if golf helps fade the psychic heat from the job, by all means tee it up often, Mr. President.
We have a lot of pressures on children very young. We have ambition. We over-schedule our children. We want them to have soccer lessons and violin lessons... I think children need to have at least an hour of fun a day.
I was raised in, and presumably to, the cutlery business. I really didn't think that that's what I wanted to do for a career. But I felt a certain obligation to give it a try.
I think my whole career has been marked - or marred - by what people presume about me. But even that's fed back into the creativity. I'm saying that I'm about contradiction, that you can't put me into a box.
It's presumptuous for us to think we are the only beings in the cosmos.
It feels presumptuous to think of writing for adults.
I have somebody I admire and want to keep at a distance. I've had the opportunity to meet her a couple of times - it's Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders. I just am nuts about her, but I have no interest in meeting her because I just don't think she could live up to what she's been to me in my head.
I don't think it is important to be a role model, because if you are a role model, you are pretending to be someone else.
Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.
In America, after 9/11, and after the death of bin Laden, and after two wars, one of them fought, a lot of people think, on false pretenses, and definitely post the Patriot Act, there are a lot of these questions about what can we do to our citizens in order to prevent the next attack.
The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
I don't think couture will die. But it should have no pretension that it will conquer the world. It's not something that will disappear because all you need is a thread and a needle to start making something couture.
I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word 'pretension' has become like the word 'ironic' - just this catch-all term to distance people from interesting experiences and cultural engagement and possible embarrassment.
