I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.'

I am not afraid of dying. I have lived longer than most people in the world. What scares me is to have a body that works but a brain that is waving goodbye. If that happens I hope I die quickly.

I don't think I'm a great songwriter but I think I've learned a lot about it and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

I know we can't always know what medical surprises may happen during childbirth. But my hope is to go fully natural - no epidural no interventions. Wish me luck.

On the other hand I believe there's hope because the breakdown and the repair are happening simultaneously.

The difficulty of IVF or of any fertility issues is the hope and the shattered hope the dream that it might happen this time and then it doesn't happen.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you and that you will work them water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom till you yourself burst into bloom.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen you don't do it and it won't happen.

My divorce came to me as a complete surprise. That's what happens when you haven't been home in eighteen years.

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

I am at home in many cultures. I live actively in three continents and I've done that for most of my life so I just make films as I see the world and that happens to speak to people. I do things that I want to do.

With fiction you can talk about plot character and narrative whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.

The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies and that's where I found my material in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired you don't come home your best self.

No I can tell you one of the first things that happens to a home secretary when they arrive in the job is that they are given a briefing about the security matters that they will be dealing with and I deal with security matters on a daily basis.

When I was 14 I felt very rundown I had a home to go to but I felt like I was 60 or something older than I feel now. And I don't know if it's something that happens at 14 or whether it was adolescence or whether I was gay or closeted gay or whatever it was I felt that.

You make movies for the people. If critics happen to like them too well that's a home run.

Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home from my childhood are still with me.

I'm from a small town so like everyone's married with children or about to have children. So it's a little hard when you go home and people are like - and that's why people think I'm gay - because they're like 'Why aren't you married?' And I'm like 'it doesn't happen for everyone right off the bat.'

I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here.

Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen whether it's like discovering a filmmaker who you're taking a chance on protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going 'I'm so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.'

When I come home my daughter will run to the door and give me a big hug and everything that's happened that day just melts away.

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

Sending Paris Hilton to jail for being the most loathed celeprosy lesion in the history of the species seems like a happening idea at first - forty-five days at Century Regional Detention Center is so the new thirty days at Promises Malibu! But it sets a dangerous precedent to jail celebs just because someone hates them.

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.