When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying as politely as possible that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

I don't feel any pressure to lose weight - and in any case if I didn't have my food I'd be a nasty piece of work and wouldn't be able to function.

I'm trying to cut down a little on eating on sodium keep my blood pressure down which is tough. Because I love food! I do but it's unfair how everything that's bad for you tastes so good and all the good stuff veggies and green things doesn't match up.

It's easy to impress me. I don't need a fancy party to be happy. Just good friends good food and good laughs. I'm happy. I'm satisfied. I'm content.

There are similarities between business and sport in the pressures involved and in the fitness aspect too.

Our children are obese either have or being threatened by diabetes high blood pressure high cholesterol and not socially adjusting properly to others because of a lack of fitness.

We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst and then we enter depression? Well some things are not different.

People feel uncomfortable talking about racial issues out of fear that if they express things they will be characterized in a way that's not fair. I think that there is still a need for a dialogue about things racial that we've not engaged in.

I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression freedom of worship freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.

President Obama's 100-day plan is pretty impressive. I think it's a Wow 100-plus days. The administration is not operating from fear it is trying to drive change for the future and that's a good thing.

Going to parties usually makes me feel depressed just because I have such social fear after meeting people.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

What is needed rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance is understanding fear that means watch it learn about it come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear not how to escape from it.

Of course Hollywood is still making some excellent pictures which reflect the great artistry that made Hollywood famous throughout the world but these films are exceptions judging from box office returns and press reviews.

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen who was a very famous movie star at the time but as a kid it didn't impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles riding around in the desert he was like a second father.

I'm just not a private person. It's not like I do things because I want things to be public it's just that's my way of expressing myself and I happen to be very famous.

There's such big pressure on people who are incredibly famous on those who have people sitting outside their front door and taking photos every time they move.