I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

I was a hop-around. I hung out with the rockabilly crew the guys who were trying to be rappers the funny kids.

As soon as you are trying to be funny or dramatic that's when things start feeling fake and boring.

I quit therapy because my analyst was trying to help me behind my back.

By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's I mean.

Caring for but never trying to own may be a further way to define friendship.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other always using friendly and sincere words.

The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you so when you start trying to count them on one hand you don't need any fingers.

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble and then not worth much after you get it.

We must guard against the overreaching hand of big government trying to take away our freedom. And we must always protect the environment in a manner consistent with our values.

I do believe that freedom isn't free - but today the corporate and political right wing is trying to cheapen this truly American value. They've been cynically using the word 'freedom' to rally the American public against its own best interests.

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems needing freedom trying to find a way to cut themselves loose but failing to rid themselves of conscience a sense of sin the whole bag of tricks.

Fortunately somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination the only thing that protects our freedom despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

I would say that playing this character has caused me to think about a lot of things. He's always questioning himself and trying to get back to something he lost touch with and trying to find forgiveness. Everybody struggles with these things to some extent in their life.

Understanding where your food comes from trying to bolster local farmers and local economies and having a better connection to the food around you and the people around you only good can come of that. I love to be involved with things like that.

I'm always trying to find brain food and indulge in knowledge that's gonna be useful.

Women oftentimes are the ones making those economic decisions sitting around the kitchen table and trying to figure out how to pay for rising gas prices or food prices or the health insurance costs. And I think that they see where they expect their leaders in Congress to also make those tough decisions.

What we are trying to do is to create a social business in Bangladesh a joint venture to create restaurants for common people. Good healthy food at affordable prices so that people don't have to opt for food that is unhealthy and unhygienic.

Somewhere near you somebody right now is trying to help the indigent and poor - providing food shelter clothing or simple kindness.

The food in such places is so tasteless because the members associate spices and garlic with just the sort of people they're trying to keep out.