When it came to political power blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

A great wind is blowing and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

Growing up I didn't have a lot of toys and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately but write from recollection and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

I was a precocious only child and then I went through a fat awkward stage for several years so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive so I think it was more of a natural progression for me developing into comedy.

I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny.

It is my fervent hope and prayer that by exposing my mistakes and by pointing out the things that were a part of my early life some who might be following the same paths might not make those same mistakes.

I hope we don't get to the point where we have to have the cat stop chasing the mouse to teach him glassblowing and basket weaving.

I don't consider myself to be a major talent so the only solace I can take is to hope I'm growing.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

All the interests of my reason speculative as well as practical combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Divorce is one of the key predictors of poverty for a child growing up in a home that's broken.

One of the biggest challenges in my job is letting go of the movie once you go home at night and knowing you can't do anything to your performance once you've laid it on film.

At home growing up we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed we just didn't have what we wanted.

I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby you know I'll do anything locally but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat sleep read watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.

We want you to sit down and leave your egos at home and let's get an understanding as to where all this is foolishness coming from. There are others who are putting things out there or throwing a stick and hiding their hand and keeping things built up in the media.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

For me already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom you'd would wake up times and hope that the next day you'd be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

Be grateful for the home you have knowing that at this moment all you have is all you need.

How do you make any sense of history art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

Those nations have a very great responsibility at this juncture of the world's affairs for by throwing their joint weight into the scales of history on the right side they may tip the balance decisively in favour of peace.